Includes bibliographical references and index.

Raised in rural Alabama, Rosa Parks had never known a time when racial segregation was not the law. Then, one day, Parks decided that she had endured enough. Her soft-spoken defiance on a city bus was the spark-and civil rights activism, led by the young Martin Luther King, Jr., was the fire. The Montgomery bus boycott thrust parks into the spotlight, but it is only one part of her story.