Rosa Parks
In refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Rose Parks helped to initiate the American Civil Rights Movement.
After Parks was found guilty for violating segregation laws, the black community boycotted the busing system. Dr. King led the boycott, which went on for over a year, and consequently Rosa Parks lost her job. Prior to Parks’ arrest, in December 1943 she joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP as the chapter secretary. She worked closely with chapter president Edgar Daniel (E.D.) Nixon.
In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to serve Detroit’s youth, and when she died in 2005, Parks became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.