Rosa Parks was a tailor's assistant in a department store in Montgomery, Alabama. A small, soft-voiced, forty-two year old woman, she was also a civil rights activist—secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) . But on the evening of December 1, 1955, Mrs. Parks was mostly just plain tired. She had put in a full day at her job. She got on a bus and headed home .

When all the seats on the bus filled up, the driver asked Rosa to stand and give her seat to a white man. Rosa Parks wouldn't budge . She knew she might get into trouble, but suddenly she found herself filled with determination. She stayed in her seat. Later she wrote: "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was tired of giving in."

Rosa Parks is soon on her way to jail . She knows that blacks are beaten and abused in Montgomery's jail. It doesn't seem to matter to her. She is tired of riding on segregated buses. She is tired of being pushed around.