This is one the most, if not the most, famous picture of the Civil Rights Movement.  It is of the event that sparked the great movement.  Seated in the foreground is Rosa Louise Mccauley Parks.  On December 1, 1955 Rosa decided she was not going to give up her bus seat to a white man.  At the time, this was against Alabama law.  Blacks were obliged to move to the back of the bus for whites.  She deliberately broke the law because she felt, "Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it," she wrote in her book Quiet Strength.
    Her refusal to get out of her sent her to prison and eventually to the Supreme Court.  It also sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, in which all blacks boycotted the buses in Montgomery.  The boycott was lead by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself.  It lasted for over 380 days.  Finally in November 1956 the Supreme Court ruled segregation on public transportation is unconstitutional.
    Rosa Parks was born on Feb. 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama.  She had been an active Civil Rights activists long before the monumental bus seat incident.  She was a member of the NAACP(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) since 1943.
    She has written two popular books:  Rosa Parks: My Story published in 1993 and written with Jim Haskins.  Also the before mentioned Quiet Strength  published in 1994.