Rosa Parks, a seamstress and civil rights activist in Montgomery, Alabama, became a symbol of African Americans' bold new action to attain their civil rights. In 1955, she was arrested for disobeying a city law that required blacks to give up their seats when white people wished to sit in their seats or in the same row. Montgomery's blacks protested her arrest by refusing to ride the buses. Their protest lasted 382 days, ending when the city abolished the bus law. The boycott became the first organized mass protest by blacks in Southern history. It also focused national attention on its leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., a Montgomery Baptist minister.
Excerpt from the "African Americans" article , The World Book Encyclopedia © 1999