Rosa Louise Parks
Parks, Rosa Louise (1913- ), civil rights leader, born in Tuskegee, Alabama. She attended Alabama State College, worked as a seamstress and housekeeper, and was active in the Montgomery Voters League and the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Youth Council. In 1943 she was elected secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. In a celebrated incident in 1955 she was arrested for violating segregation laws when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This resulted in a boycott of the bus system by blacks, with Martin Luther King, Jr. leading the movement. In spite of harassment the boycott continued, and in 1956 segregated seating was challenged in a federal lawsuit. Within a
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