Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress and NAACP secretary, became a pivotal symbol of the Civil Rights Movement when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Contrary to the myth that she was simply 'tired,' Parks was a trained activist whose act of defiance was a courageous stand against institutionalized racism. Her arrest triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted 381 days and led to the Supreme Court ruling that bus segregation was unconstitutional. The boycott also catapulted a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight. Known as the 'Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,' Parks spent the rest of her life advocating for racial equality and social justice, eventually receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her role in changing the moral fabric of America.