JOHANNESBURG – 1 December marks the day iconic figure Rosa Parks was arrested in Alabama for refusing to give her bus seat to a white passenger.
The act of defiance launched the historic Montgomery bus boycott by 17,000 black citizens.
Parks, who died in 2005 invigorated the struggle for racial equality.
On this day in 1955 Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery after a long day at work.
Upon entering, the driver, a white male – James Blake demanded she and three other black passengers give up their seats. An order that Parks vehemently refused to follow.
She would later be lauded and celebrated for that brave move, which directly disobeyed a law designed to segregate bus passengers by race.
In the years that followed, Parks shared her sentiments over what happened that day.
“It did not seem right, it wasn’t right, and I felt that I was being mistreated.”
In November 1956, a Supreme Court ruled public bus segregation as unconstitutional.