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(born Feb. 4, 1913, Tuskegee, Ala., U.S. — died Oct. 24, 2005, Detroit, Mich.) U.S. civil rights activist. She worked as a seamstress in Montgomery, Ala., where she joined the NAACP in 1943. In 1955 she was arrested after refusing to give her seat on a public bus to a white man. The resultant boycott of the city's bus system, organized by Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, brought the civil rights movement to new prominence. In 1957 Parks moved to Detroit, where she was a staff assistant (1965 – 88) to U.S. Rep. John Conyers. She was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.