Rosa Parks was an American civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement. On December 1, 1955, her act of defiance, though not the first, was instrumental in sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This 381-day protest, which resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that declared bus segregation unconstitutional, brought national attention to racial segregation and elevated the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. Parks, a longtime NAACP member, continued her activism throughout her life, eventually receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal for her enduring legacy of quiet strength and dignity in the fight for racial equality.