#8: Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)
Rosa Parks had worked for years with the NAACP before she refused to surrender her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus on December 1, 1955. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted 381 days and united thousands of residents in a peaceful protest against segregation. Opponents portrayed Parks as someone disrupting public life, but her actions highlighted the unfair treatment Black Americans faced every day. The boycott ended after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses violated the Constitution.
