December 1955

Rosa Parks, NAACP secretary and trained activist, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus on December 1, 1955, leading to her arrest and sparking the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott, led by the 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr., ended bus segregation in Montgomery and launched the modern civil rights movement.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus and was arrested, an act of deliberate civil resistance that triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The 381-day boycott, led by the young Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., ended with the Supreme Court ruling bus segregation unconstitutional and launched the modern civil rights movement. Parks, an experienced NAACP organizer, had long been active in civil rights work and was not acting spontaneously.

Rosa Parks, a trained activist and NAACP chapter secretary, was arrested on a Montgomery city bus for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. Parks's arrest, chosen by movement leaders as a test case, triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott and placed her at the center of the civil rights movement.

The Montgomery Improvement Association was founded on the first day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, with the 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. elected as its president. The MIA organized the logistics of the boycott including alternative transportation, demonstrated the capacity of Black institutions to sustain mass direct action.