Rosa Parks, stepped into history on December 1, 1955, in
Montgomery, Ala., when she refused to give up her bus seat to a
white passenger. She was arrested, jailed and tried.The incident led to the year-long boycott of the Montgomery bus system by Blacks, who demanded an end to segregation on buses. The success of the boycott, which was led by Martin Luther King Jr., intensified the struggling civil rights movement. Parks, sometimes called "the mother of the civil rights movement," won the NAACP Springarn medal in 1979 for her contributions to civil rights. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference sponsors an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award. She was born in Tuskegee, Ala., February 14, 1913, and grew up in Montgomery. She attended Alabama State College.