Name at birth: Rosa Louise McCauley

In 1955, Rosa Parks was an African-American seamstress living in Montgomery, Alabama -- a city with laws that strictly segregated blacks and whites. When Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man, she was arrested and fined. The subsequent bus boycott by African-Americans, led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., caused a national sensation that eventually led to widespread desegregation in the United States and to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Over time, Parks became a national icon of civil rights and African-American pride. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton in 1996.

1 December 1955 was the day Parks refused to give up her seat... The incident was reminiscent of Homer Plessy's refusal to leave an all-white rail car in Louisiana in 1892... Parks worked as an aide to Michigan Congressman John Conyers, Jr. from 1966-88... She married Raymond Parks in 1932, and they remained married until his death in 1977. They had no children... Her hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama was home to the Tuskegee Institute, which was led for many years by Booker T. Washington. He died in 1915, two years after Parks was born