Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was born in 1913 and died in 2005. She was in the NAACP and she was a seamstress. In December of 1955, three years earlier, there had been an attempt to desegregate the buses in the south but it was unsuccessful. She sat in the front of a bus even though the buses were segregated. The rules said that if the white people were not on the bus African-Americans could sit in the front. But if white people were on the bus, African-Americans would have to sit in the back of the bus. Rosa Parks was in the front of the bus when a white person wanted her seat but she refused to give it up and went to jail. This started the 381-day bus boycotts in Montgomery Alabama. When she was arrested, her lawyer said,

"'Virtually every African-American person in Montgomery had some negative experience with the buses. But we had no choice. We had to use the buses for transportation.'"

The buses are what started the desegregation of modern transportations.