Death of Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks died on 24 October 2005 in Detroit, aged 92. An American civil rights activist, Parks worked as a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, and was an active member of the local branch of the NAACP. On 1 December 1955 she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger, as the segregation rules required, and was arrested. Her act sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, led by Martin Luther King Jr., which lasted more than a year and ended after the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. She faced threats and job loss, moved to Detroit, and continued to work for civil rights. She is remembered as the mother of the civil rights movement and received the Congressional Gold Medal.

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