Black History Month

As the Kentucky Court of Justice celebrates Black History Month, we would like to honor Rosa Parks who has been nationally recognized as the "mother of the modern-day civil rights movement". Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a bus and her subsequent arrest on Dec. 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Ala., triggered a mass movement against racial segregation that sent reverberations throughout the country.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted an entire year, from Dec. 5, 1955 to Dec. 21, 1956, was one of the largest and most successful peaceful protests in United States history. It led to the Nov. 13, 1956, U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared Alabama laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional.

Rosa Parks' courageous act of civil disobedience redirected American history and left an enduring legacy for civil rights movements around the world. She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala., and died Oct. 24, 2005, in Detroit, Mich.