What is Rosa Parks famous for?

Rosa Parks, often called the “mother of the civil rights movement,” is best known for her role in sparking the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–56. On December 1, 1955, she was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a white man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation ordinances. Under the aegis of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the leadership of the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, Jr., a boycott of the municipal bus company was begun on December 5. The boycott would last until December 21, 1956, with total victory for the protesters, following the Supreme Court’s upholding (in November) of a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated seating unconstitutional.

Parks went on to receive numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996) and the Congressional Gold Medal (1999). After her death in 2005, her body lay in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, making her the first woman and the second Black person to receive that honor.