When
she received the Congressional Gold Medal, the United States Congress declared
Rosa Parks as the "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement."
Rosa Parks was catapulted into the public's attention when in 1955 in Montgomery
Alabama she refused to obey a bus driver's demand that she give up her seat for
a white person. Rosa Parks was arrested and this act of civil disobedience started
the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which turned out to be a milestone in the movement
against racial segregation in America. Martin Luther King, Jr. played a major
role in the Boycott and it helped him to become a leading voice in the civil rights
movement. Rosa Parks continued to work for civil rights and remained one of the
movement's greatest icons. In 1965 until she retired in 1988, Rosa Parks worked
for African-American Congressman John Conyers in his Detroit office. Rosa Parks
received numerous other awards for her dedication to equal rights for all including
the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Time Magazine named her "one of the
20 most influential and iconic figures of the twentieth century."
