Home / Full timeline / Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person after being ordered by the bus driver, sparking a bus boycott that would last over a year.
Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person after being ordered by the bus driver, sparking a bus boycott that would last over a year.
1955 (Dec 1)
Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to surrender her seat as ordered by the bus's driver. She was arrested for violating Jim Crow ordinances, and the city's Blacks began a city-wide bus boycott on December 5. Despite terrorist attacks on boycott leaders, legal harassment, massive arrests, and civil suits, the boycott continued until December 13, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses in Montgomery was illegal. Another significant result of the boycott movement was the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr., as a national leader.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.