Rosa Parks

BORN: February 4, 1913 • Tuskegee, Alabama

DIED: October 24, 2005 • Detroit, Michigan

American civil rights activist

By not giving up her bus seat to a white man on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks's quiet defiance triggered the escalation of a major social movement by black Americans seeking equality under the law. Parks, a reserved, hardworking black woman, became one of the great contributors to the growing Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. The Civil Rights Movement was a largely nonviolent struggle between 1945 and 1970 by black Americans who sought to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all black Americans. Civil rights are the protections and privileges that law gives to all citizens in...