Rosa Parks: 1913-2005

Rosa Parks died Monday at the age of 92. She helped inspire the civil rights movement through her act of civil disobediance 50 years ago.

"Before her arrest in 1955, Parks was active in the voter registration movement and with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, where she also worked as a secretary in 1943.

At the time of her arrest, Parks was 42 and on her way home from work as a seamstress.

She took a seat in the front of the black section of a city bus in Montgomery. The bus filled up and the bus driver demanded that she move so a white male passenger could have her seat.

'The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't,' she once said.

When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her."

She went on to work for Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), and became a prominent advocate for civil rights. Parks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton in 1996.