Rosa Parks
(1913-2005)

African-American Civil Rights Leader
National Women's Hall of Fame
1991 National Freedom Award
1996 Presidential Medal of Freedom
1999 Congression Gold Medal

birthdate: February 4
birthplace: Tuskegee, Alabama

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When she received the Congressional Gold Medal, the United States Congress declared Rosa Parks as the "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement." Rosa Parks was catapulted into the public's attention when in 1955 in Montgomery Alabama she refused to obey a bus driver's demand that she give up her seat for a white person. Rosa Parks was arrested and this act of civil disobedience started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which turned out to be a milestone in the movement against racial segregation in America. Martin Luther King, Jr. played a major role in the Boycott and it helped him to become a leading voice in the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks continued to work for civil rights and remained one of the movement's greatest icons. In 1965 until she retired in 1988, Rosa Parks worked for African-American Congressman John Conyers in his Detroit office. Rosa Parks received numerous other awards for her dedication to equal rights for all including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Time Magazine named her "one of the 20 most influential and iconic figures of the twentieth century."