Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat occurred on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks, an African American seamstress and civil rights activist, was riding a segregated city bus when the driver ordered her to give her seat to a white passenger. She quietly refused, leading to her arrest for violating segregation laws. Her courageous stand sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a 381-day protest that helped launch the modern civil rights movement and elevated figures like Martin Luther King Jr. Parks went on to work for civil rights causes for the rest of her life and became a national symbol of dignity and resistance.