Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist whose refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus on December 1, 1955, sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That single act of defiance became one of the most important catalysts of the American civil rights movement. She was not the first to resist bus segregation, but her quiet dignity and the organizing that followed her arrest changed the trajectory of a nation. She spent the rest of her life advocating for justice, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.