Photograph of Rosa Parks (1913–2005)

In December 1955, after defying an order to move to the “colored” section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks became a national figure in the fight against racial segregation. The arrest of Parks, who was already a civil rights activist, sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, a year-long campaign demanding an end to segregation on the city’s public transit system. As the longtime secretary of the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Parks worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Montgomery Improvement Association to support the boycott by providing rides to those who needed them. After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down segregated seating on public transport in November 1956, civil rights leaders ended the boycott and created flyers like the one shown here, encouraging Black Montgomerians to “be first class citizens” and “ride desegregated on buses!”