On this day, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old Black seamstress and NAACP member, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest led to the launch of the Montgomery Bus Boycott on December 5, 1955, organized by local Black leaders including a then-little-known pastor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The boycott lasted over a year, until December 20, 1956, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation on public buses unconstitutional. This nonviolent protest became a major catalyst for the modern Civil Rights Movement.
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