Rosa Parks
Parks Elementary School
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called the "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement." On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger and was later arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance. The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The association called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 382 days and brought Parks and the cause to the attention of the world. A Supreme Court decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation. In 1996, President Clinton presented Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Upon her death, Parks was the first woman in American history to lie in state at the Capitol, an honor reserved for U.S. Presidents.