This Day in History: , Rosa Parks Ignites Bus Boycott.
December 1, 1955.
“The mother of the civil rights movement,” Parks was jailed in Montgomery, AL, for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man.
A Montgomery city ordinance required Black Americans to sit in the back of city buses and give up their seats to white riders.
The local chapter of the NAACP, of which Parks was a member, had been planning to challenge the racist bus laws for months.
The 42-year-old seamstress' decision to refuse her seat was spontaneous, but she was aware of the implications of her choice.
Parks' historic act of civil disobedience led to the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Less than a year after Parks' arrest, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the bus segregation laws as a violation of the 14th Amendment