Rosa Parks was not the first Black person to get into trouble for refusing to give up her seat on a bus. In 1944, future Major League Baseball great Jackie Robinson was in Officer's Candidate School at Fort Hood, Texas, when the driver of a military bus ordered him to give up his seat. He refused. When his commanding officer declined to court martial him, he was transferred to another unit and faced a plethora of charges. The teetotaling Robinson was even charged with public drunkenness. By the time of the court martial, all of the charges had been dropped, except for two counts of insubordination. Robinson was acquitted.
In 1946 Irene Morgan took a case to the US Supreme Court. In 1955, Sarah Louise Keys took a case to the Interstate Commerce Commission. The results of both those cases ended segregation in interstate transportation.
The Jim Crow laws still required segregation in Montgomery Alabama. In 1955, Claudette Colvin was a 15 year old member of the NAACP Youth Council. In March of that year, she was ordered to give up her seat on a bus. She later said she remembered her advisor at the NAACP, Rosa Parks saying "Do what is right". She refused to give up her seat and was arrested. The NAACP wanted to use her case to challenge the Jim Crow laws, until it was learned that she was pregnant.. It was thought that segregationists would hold her pregnancy against her, and the idea of a challenge was dropped.
Most of the customers of the buses in Montgomery were black. Which seats were for "coloreds" was determined by a sign which could be moved up and down the aisle as Whites got on the bus. If there were Whites aboard, Blacks were required to pay their fare up by the driver, get off the bus and re enter the bus by the back door. Many times the drivers left before the Blacks got to the rear door.
Rosa Parks 
and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Photo by wikipedia.org
Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley. Her ancestry was African American, Cherokee Creek and Scots Irish. She married Raymond Parks, a member of the NAACP, and went to work for Edgar Nixon, the president of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP.
In 1943, Parks dropped her purse while getting onto a bus. She sat in a "White" seat to pick up her stuff. The enraged driver kicked her off the bus and left her to walk 8 kilometers home through the rain.
When she entered the bus on December 1, 1955, she didn't notice that the driver was the same one who had kicked her off in 1943, James F. Blake. She sat in the "colored" section. As the White section filled, the driver moved the sign back and ordered Parks, and three other Blacks in her row to move. The other three moved. Parks later said, "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night. When ordered out of her seat, Parks said "I don't think I should have to stand up." When the driver said he was going to call the police, Parks replied "You may do that."
People have said Parks didn't give up her seat because she was tired. Her response to that was "No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
She sat in jail for roughly a day. She was convicted of disorderly conduct and fined ten dollars, plus four dollars court costs.
On Sunday, December 4, a bus boycott was announced at Black church services. On Monday, December 5, leaders of the Black community met and formed what the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy named the Montgomery Improvement Association, or MIA. A newcomer to Mointgomery was elected president, a reverend named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The boycott was extended, and ended up lasting 381 days.
Whites retaliated. Black churches were burned and King's and Nixon's houses were bombed.
Parks weas not used as a plaintiff in a lawsuit, because of the time necessary for her criminal case to make its way through the state appeals courts, to the federal appeals courts. The suit was Browder vs. Gayle, and it resulted in the federal court ending segregation in buses running within state borders.
Parks died in 2005, in Detroit Michigan. Th nation's flags were flown at half staff, and the front seats of the buses in Detroit and Montgomery were ribboned off, reserved in her honor.
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