Today, an icon was born on Feb. 4, 1913. Rosa Parks (born Rosa Louise McCauley Parks) was an American civil rights activist and a Black woman whose 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus to a white man sparked bus boycotts, mass protests, and action from grassroots organizations.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the biggest and most effective mass protests to combat racial segregation in American history, was started following her arrest.

The event occurred around the same time that 14-year-old Emmitt Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi. He was accused of whistling at a white woman and was killed by a white racist mob.

Blacks had long endured racial segregation in the South. Separate schools, park benches, and even water fountains for Black and white people — this was the norm.

It was no different with public transportation. White people sat at the front of the bus; Black people had to sit at the back. Black passengers had to enter the bus by the front door to pay the driver, but they had to exit and make their way to the back of the bus to board again.

Enter Rosa Parks, on Dec. 1, 1955: After a long day at work, Rosa Parks boarded a city bus and grabbed a seat. At the time, she was a seamstress for a Montgomery, Alabama, department store.

Park refused when she was told to get up and vacate her seat by a white passenger. Police were called; she was arrested and fined $US14.

Protests surrounding the arrest continued for a year after that. During non-violent movements to address civil rights disparities, a young Martin Luther King led several protests and survived two bomb attacks.

The boycott ended on Nov. 13, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Alabama's bus segregation rules.

It’s important to note that Parks was not the first woman to defend her bus seat. A young woman named Claudette Colvin is a name to remember. Pregnant and single, she was passed over as the face of the movement. Parks, after all, was married for 42 years and was involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Still, what followed for Parks was no walk in the park. She received death threats and harassment until she moved to Detroit, Michigan, to live with her brother. She took a job as a seamstress, and from 1965 until she retired, she worked as a secretary for John Conyers, an African American congressman of 52 years.

To honour her legacy, many states introduced Rosa Parks Day, which is held either on the day she was arrested or on Feb. 4, her birthday.

Rosa Parks died in 2005 at the age of 92.