On a cold December evening in 1955, Rosa Parks quietly incited a revolution, by just sitting down.
She was tired after spending the day at work as a department store seamstress. She stepped onto the bus for the ride home and sat in the fifth row (the first row of the "COLORED SECTION").
In Montgomery, Alabama, when a bus became full, the seats nearer the front were given to white passengers.
Montgomery bus driver James Blake ordered Parks and three other African Americans seated nearby to move ("Move y'all, I want those two seats,") to the back of the bus.
Three riders complied; Parks did not.
After Parks refused to move, she was arrested and fined $10. The chain of events triggered by her arrest changed the United States.
Black history month is an annual celebration of achievements by black Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of African Americans in U.S. history. The event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other prominent African Americans. Since 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month. The story of Black History Month begins in 1915: Carter G. Woodson and the prominent minister Jesse E. Moorland founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. They sponsored a National Negro History Week in 1926, choosing the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. By the late 1960s, thanks in part to the Civil Rights Movement,Negro History Week had evolved into Black History Month. President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized Black History Month in 1976.
