When Rosa Parks refused to accept second-class citizenship on a Montgomery Alabama city bus, one of the most important moments in American civil rights history was born.
Today marks the 55th anniversary of Parks' defiant stand that launched her in to the pantheon of American greats, including Marcus Garvey, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr.
Of all those black pioneers, Parks was, perhaps, the most unlikely to become a trailblazer.
A 42-year-old dressmaker planned on going to work as usual, when the driver of her bus triggered the fateful confrontation by telling Parks to give her seat to a white man on the rapidly filling bus.
Parks said no, got arrested and was convicted four days later for disorderly conduct.
Dr. King, at the unbelievably young age of 26, led a more than year-long boycott of the bus system by blacks.
The courts eventually desegregated public transportation, and in 1964, the Civil Rights Act desegregated public accommodations nationwide.
Parks, who died in 2005, received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal - two of this nation's highest civilian honors - for her act of defiance.
And the honors are still rolling in.
Today, Google celebrated Parks with a doodle showing children running toward a bus.
And in Milwaukee, city buses are running their headlights all day and will have a sign on the front seat to honor Parks.
The dressmaker who made history hasn't been forgotten.
16-Nov-10 - Forty-five years after he was killed by an Alabama State Trooper, Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose death lead to the first civil rights march on Selma, he is finally getting a small measure of justice.
12-Nov-10 - In a case better suited for Judge Mathis, Paula Cook is proceeding with her civil suit against Fantasia Barrino for an antiquated legal cause of action called "Alienation of Affection" in a North Carolina court.
When Rosa Parks refused to accept second-class citizenship on a Montgomery Alabama city bus, one of the most important moments in American civil rights history was born.