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Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat
The arrest that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott
Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for not giving up her bus seat. The Montgomery bus boycott that followed lasted 381 days and helped build the civil rights movement.
The Library of Congress says Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955 in Montgomery after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. She was charged with disorderly conduct. The civil rights leader E. D. Nixon posted her bail, and the attorney Clifford Durr and his wife Virginia also helped.
Her trial was held on 5 December 1955 in Montgomery's Recorder's Court, and she was fined $14.00 including court costs. Her attorney, Fred Gray, appealed but lost on a technicality. The boycott of the city buses is generally dated from the same day as her trial.
Britannica names her arrest as the trigger for the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted 381 days. Organised, sustained economic pressure by the city's Black residents challenged segregation on the buses and helped build the wider civil rights movement. The sources consulted do not give the date the boycott ended, so this entry relies on the stated 381-day length. A 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declared segregated public transit in Montgomery unconstitutional.
Parks was not the first Black woman arrested in Montgomery for refusing a bus seat. Claudette Colvin, then a teenager, was arrested in March 1955 for the same reason, months before Parks.