Rosa Parks

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus, which spurred on the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott that helped launch nationwide efforts to end segregation of public facilities.  The city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses.  Over the next half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of dignity and strength in the struggle to end entrenched racial segregation.  On this day in 2005, at the age of 92, Rosa Parks died in her apartment in Detroit, Michigan.