Celebrated as “the first lady of Civil Rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement,” Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913–October 24, 2005) helped usher in a new era of equality with her iconic act of defiance against injustice: Her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955, became one of the symbolic pillars of the modern Civil Rights movement. Though Parks, raised by a strong mother and nursed on pride in her heritage, was not the first African American ...
