R  osa Parks (1913-2005) was a civil rights activist known for her refusal to surrender her city bus seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955. That bold act led to the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama and helped ignite the civil rights movement in the United States. “I was 42 [and] tired of giving in,” Parks said about her decision to defy the common practice of acquiescing Black American rights in deference to White American privilege. She was subsequently arrested and fined fourteen dollars, which she never paid.

Parks wasn’t the first to protest segregated public transit in Alabama—15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested nine months earlier for the same offense along with dozens of other Black women before her. Rosa Parks’ defiance, however, made the biggest impact because she was the secretary for the local NAACP and accepted the chapter president’s offer to appeal the conviction and thus challenge legal segregation in Alabama. Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, but moved to her maternal grandparents’ farm in Pine Level, Alabama, outside Montgomery, with her mother and brother when she was two years old, following her parent’s divorce. For much of her childhood, Rosa was educated at home by her mother—a local schoolteacher—because Rosa suffered from chronic tonsillitis. She worked on the farm and learned to cook and sew. Racism was a constant presence for Rosa and her family. Public transportation, drinking fountains, restaurants, and schools were all segregated under Jim Crow laws. Night raids by the Ku Klux Klan forced her family to be ever vigilant and ready to leave their home at a moment’s notice on nights deemed particularly dangerous.

Rosa attended school from age eleven to sixteen. She left due to a family illness and started cleaning houses for white people. At age nineteen, she married Raymond Parks—a barber and civil rights activist. With his encouragement, Rosa earned her high school diploma and made a living as a seamstress. She joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943 and served as its secretary until 1956.

Rosa Parks’ actions inspired the young pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott starting on December 5, 1955. It lasted 381 days. With Black American ridership constituting 70% of the bus system’s revenues, the boycott made a large statement as it deeply cut into the bus company’s revenues. Other boycotts subsequently took place across the country, protesting segregated restaurants and other public facilities. In November 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional. Rosa Parks penned several books about her life, and became known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”