On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old woman took a seat on the bus on her way home from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. Before she reached her destination, she quietly set off a social revolution when the bus driver instructed her to move back, and she refused. Rosa Parks, an African American, was Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions Rosa Parks Arrested. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for disorderly conduct for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Civil Rights leader E. D. Nixon bailed her out of jail, joined by white friends Clifford Durr, an attorney, and his wife, Virginia. Rosa Parks' Bus . In 1955, African Americans were still required by a Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Discover how her act of defiance sparked the US civil rights movement. “During the Montgomery bus boycott, we came together and remained unified for 381 days. It has never been done again. The Montgomery boycott became the model for human rights throughout the world.” When Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, she was mentally prepared for the moment. December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. On December 6, Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. She was found guilty and fined. After the trial, Parks appealed her conviction and challenged the legality of racial segregation. Browder v Gayle. Although the Rosa Parks case took place a few months after the plaintiffs of Browder v. In Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation laws. The William Pretzer was five years old when Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested. It was December 1, 1955. The 42-year-old seamstress was on a city bus, en route home after a day’s work Rosa Parks (born February 4, 1913, Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.—died October 24, 2005, Detroit, Michigan) was an American civil rights activist whose refusal to relinquish her seat on a public bus precipitated the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, which became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement in the United States. On a cold December evening, Rosa Parks boarded a crowded bus. When the driver demanded she give up her seat for a white passenger, she quietly refused. Her arrest that day set the wheels of change in motion. Rosa Parks’ Arrest. Rosa was arrested and charged with violating segregation laws. Shortly after Parks’s arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, a leader of the WPC, and E.D. Nixon, president of the local NAACP, printed and distributed leaflets describing Parks’s arrest and called for a one-day boycott of the city buses on December 5. They believed that the boycott could be effective because the Montgomery bus system was heavily Four days before the incident, Parks attended a meeting where she learned of the acquittal of Till's murderers. In her autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story (1992), Parks declares her defiance was an intentional act: "I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people When Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man in 1955, she was put in handcuffs and arrested. But what happened next? The answer to that question just became more In 1932 she married Raymond Parks, a barber and member of the NAACP. At that time, Raymond Parks was active in the Scottsboro case. In 1943 Rosa Parks joined the local chapter of the NAACP and was elected secretary. Two years later, she registered to vote, after twice being denied. By 1949 Parks was advisor to the local NAACP Youth Council. Montgomery’s boycott was not entirely spontaneous, and Rosa Parks and other activists had prepared to challenge segregation long in advance. On December 1, 1955, a tired Rosa L. Parks left the department store where she worked as a tailor’s assistant and boarded a crowded city bus for the ride home. Rosa Parks is best known for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, which sparked a yearlong boycott that was a turning point in the civil rights Two iconic pictures of Parks being fingerprinted (seen here) and of her mugshot are not from this arrest, but rather from her arrest in February 1956 during boycott when she was arrested along with other boycott organizers for their role in the boycott. But they are regularly mis-attributed to this arrest. The Arrest of Rosa Parks . On the morning of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks went to work. During her coffee break, she met with the president of the local college to discuss organizing an NAACP workshop, and during her lunch break, she met with the lawyer who handled Claudette Colvin’s case. By the end of her day, she was tired.
Articles and news, personal stories, interviews with experts.
Photos from events, contest for the best costume, videos from master classes.
![]() | ![]() |
![]() | ![]() |
![]() | ![]() |
![]() | ![]() |
![]() | ![]() |
![]() | ![]() |