On December 1, 1955, civil rights activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Her action prompted a year-long boycott of the Montgomery public transit system, which only came to an end after bus segregation was ruled illegal by the federal courts. Read a brief biography of Rosa Parks from the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at Troy State Univerity, Montgomery. In 1999 Ms. Parks received the background report on the Pacifica News Network.