In 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white passenger, her decision sparked the beginning of a new era in the civil rights movement. Her arrest inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and other African American leaders to organize a bus boycott that ended only when a U.S. Supreme Court decision ended segregation on public buses. Readers will learn how events in her life brought Parks to the point where she decided to stand up for her rights and how her courage helped to change America.