Rosa Parks was an American civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a pivotal moment in the fight against racial segregation in the United States. Before that day, she had already been active for years as a secretary of the local NAACP chapter. Her quiet courage and firm dignity helped ignite a movement led by leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She later received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's two highest civilian honors, and is remembered as one of the most important figures in American civil rights history.