Rosa Parks: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement Dies at 92

Rosa Parks was an American civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her bus seat helped spark the Montgomery bus boycott. Born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama, she worked as a seamstress and as secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter.

On December 1, 1955, Parks was arrested for not yielding her seat to a white passenger. The boycott that followed lasted 381 days, led by Martin Luther King Jr., and ended with the Supreme Court ruling against bus segregation. She later moved to Detroit and worked for Congressman John Conyers.

Parks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. She died at her home in Detroit on October 24, 2005, at age 92. She became the first woman to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Achievements: Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996), Congressional Gold Medal (1999).

Birth: February 4, 1913 - Tuskegee, Alabama.

Profession: Civil rights activist.

Interesting Facts: She was an activist for years before her famous arrest.