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Rosa Parks interviewed by the Academy of Achievement

02 Jun 1995

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Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, and moved to Montgomery, Alabama, when she was a small child. She graduated high school in 1933 and became involved in the Civil Rights movement in the early 1940s. In 1955, Parks became an international icon of the Civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This event sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a protest which eventually led, in 1956, to the removal of segregation laws on Alabama's buses.

Here, Parks explains what actually happened on that day in 1955.

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