Person · 1913–2005
Rosa Parks
Far more than "the woman who would not give up her seat" — a lifelong organizer whose 1955 arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott.
A catalyst of the [[civil-rights-movement]].
Rosa Parks was a seasoned NAACP activist who had investigated racial violence and sexual assault for years before December 1, 1955, when her refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery triggered a 381-day boycott that launched the modern movement and a young Martin Luther King Jr.
She paid for it with her job and years of harassment, eventually moving to Detroit, where she kept organizing for decades. Recent scholarship has restored her full record as a radical, lifelong freedom fighter.