In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, and her arrest ignited the Montgomery bus boycott, a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. Born in Tuskegee and raised in Pine Level, she grew up in the segregated South and became secretary of the Montgomery NAACP in 1953. Her act of defiance made Montgomery—and Alabama—the stage for a national struggle over racial justice. After moving to Detroit, she continued her activism and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and recognition in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall as the first Black American memorialized there.