Notes

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white man passenger, spurring the Montgomery boycott and other effort to end segregation

Rosa parks childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. After her parents separated , Rosa's mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards both former state and strong advocates for racial equality the family lived on the Edwards farm were Rosa could spend her youth. In one experience, Rosa's grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street.

Parks was not the first African American woman to be arrested refusing to yield her seat on a Montgomery bus.

Parks was not sitting in a whites only section. Parks was sitting in the front row of a middle section of the bus open to African Americans if seats were vacant. After the "whites only" section filled on subsequent stops in a white man was left standing, the driver demanded that parks and three others in the row leave their seats. While the other three eventually moved, Parks did not.

Parks did not refused to leave her seat because her feet were tired

Parks was the first woman to lie in the state at the U.S. Capitol. After parks died at the age 92 on October 24,2005, she received a final tribute usually reserved for statesman and military leaders when her body was brought to the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. More than 30,00 people filed past her coffin to pay respects.

Bus seats were left empty to honor Rosa Parks on the 50th anniversary of her arrest. On December 1, 2005, transit authorities in New York City, Washington, D.C and other American cities symbolically left behind bus drivers empty to commemorate Park's act of civil disobedience.