Rosa Louise McCauley Parks
(February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)
(FOX NEWS) – Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American
seamstress and local activist, refused to give up her seat
to a White passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama, public
bus on this day in history, Dec. 1, 1955.
"The only tired I was, was tired of giving in," Parks said of
her decision to challenge local authority.
Black bus riders were required to sit in the back of the bus,
and to also give up those seats to White riders if the front
seats were filled, under local Montgomery ordinance.
The case became bogged down in the state courts, but the
federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle resulted
in a November 1956 decision that bus segregation is
unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of
the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala. after her arrest for civil disobedience.
