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Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. She is most famous for her December 1, 1955 arrest for refusing a bus driver's order to give up her seat to a white man and stand in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested, tried, and convicted for disorderly conduct, and on appeal, the case ultimately resulted in the 1956 United States Supreme Court ruling that segregated bus service was unconstitutional. Her arrest was used by Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the successful year-long Montgomery bus boycott and to help mount other protests against laws requiring racial segregationRacial segregation is a kind of formalized or institutionalized discrimination on the basis of race, characterized by their separation from each other. The separation may be geographical, but is usually supported by providing services through separate ins. Parks moved to Detroit in the early 1960s, where she continues to reside.
While standard accounts of Parks' act of civil disobedienceThe term civil disobedience characterises the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence. Civil disobedience has been used in struggles in India in the fight ag in 1955 refer to her simply as a tired seamstress, it is often forgotten that she had attended trainings at the Highlander Folk School earlier that year. The Highlander Folk School was founded in 1932 as an education center for workers' rights and, later, racial equality .
Although she is known for refusing to give up her bus seat, she was not the first to do so. Indeed, the NAACPThe National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP is one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States. It was founded in 1909, to work on behalf of black people. Members of the NAACP have referre had accepted and litigated other cases before, such as that of Irene MorganIrene Morgan was an important precursor to Rosa Parks in the successful fight to overturn segregationist laws in the United States. Like the more famous Parks, but 11 years earlier, the 27 year old Morgan was arrested and jailed for refusing to give up he, ten years earlier, which resulted in a victory in the Supreme Court on Commerce ClauseArticle I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution empowers the United States Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes". The Commerce Clause has been the subject of intense grounds. That victory only overturned State segregation laws as applied to actual travel in interstate commerce, e.g. interstate bus travel. The Rosa Parks case is considered the landmark because it applied to all segregationist laws, not just those affecting interstate commerce.
The NAACPThe National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP is one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States. It was founded in 1909, to work on behalf of black people. Members of the NAACP have referre had additionally considered but rejected some earlier protesters deemed unable or unsuitable to withstand the pressure of a legal challenge to segregation laws (See Claudette ColvinClaudette Colvin (born 1940) is a black woman from Alabama. On March 2, 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white person, in violation of local law. Her arrest preceded civil rights activist Rosa Parks' (on December 1, 1955) by, Mary Louise Smith). The selection of her for a test case supported by the NAACP has been speculated to be in part because she was employed by the NAACP.