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Rosa Parks joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943 and until her death in 2005, at age 92, she devoted herself to civil rights and equality in the US.

On December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, refused to cooperate with a segregation law. As she boarded a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, she took a seat in the designated "black" rows in the back. When the bus filled up she was asked to move so that a white man could have her spot. She refused to give the man her seat and was then arrested. This event sparked what would become a national movement of resistance to racial segregation and discrimination. Local black leaders of the NAACP organized around Parks, who had been a member of the organization since 1943 and secretary for the local chapter. They decided to start a citywide boycott of the Montgomery bus system on December 5, 1955. The boycott lasted 382 days and was extremely effective as black citizens constituted about 75% of Montgomery's bus riders. But it wasn't until December 17, 1956 that the US District Court ruled on the case, Browder v. Gayle, which had challenged the Alabama state statutes and Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinances requiring segregation on Montgomery buses, and three days later the order for integrated buses arrived in Montgomery.

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