Rosa Parks and Civil Disobedience
Primary Sources of the Civil Rights Movement
Reading Level: 6
Interest Level: 6-8
Rosa Parks was a seamstress whose refusal to obey an unjust law lit the fuse that sparked the civil rights movement. Her arrest for failing to give up her seat on a bus started the Montgomery bus boycott, which launched Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence. Her lawsuit following her arrest tested the constitutionality of segregation laws, which were later overturned.