12 photos of Rosa Parks to celebrate her historic act of resistance
- 8 years ago
On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks defied the segregationist Jim Crow laws of the time and refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus for a white male passenger.
Though she wasn't the first to disobey the city's laws, her act of resistance, 60 years ago today, came to be a definitive symbol of the civil rights movement and set off a bus boycott that lasted for over a year.
In a statement to an Associated Press reporter in the courtroom, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the decision "a glorious daybreak to end a long night of enforced segregation."
Parks, who died at the age of 92 in Detroit, was a lifelong activist who had been a member of the NAACP for a decade before her now historic act of resistance.
Though she wasn't the first to disobey the city's laws, her act of resistance, 60 years ago today, came to be a definitive symbol of the civil rights movement and set off a bus boycott that lasted for over a year.
In a statement to an Associated Press reporter in the courtroom, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the decision "a glorious daybreak to end a long night of enforced segregation."
Parks, who died at the age of 92 in Detroit, was a lifelong activist who had been a member of the NAACP for a decade before her now historic act of resistance.