America. Rosa Louise Parks is considered the mother of the modern-day civil rights movement in America. She is famous for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a while man in Alabama in 1955, leading to her arrest. Protests in the form of sit-ins and eat-ins began in Montgomery and soon spread across the state, the South and the country. As her official biography states, "Her quiet courageous act changed America, its view of black people and redirected the course of history."