For most of the United States’ history, civil rights for the black community was essentially nonexistent. Most African-Americans were forced into slavery and the law rarely sided with them on matters that involved the majority. However, as time progressed the black minority was given more and more liberties. For example, during Abraham Lincoln’s time as President of the United States, slavery was abolished; however, the black community still did not have the same rights as the majority. Nearly 100 years later, the Civil Rights Movement was able to successfully make the government pass legislation that would give African-Americans the same rights as that of the majority.
One of the key figures who furthered the civil rights of black men and women, Rosa Parks lit a match that sparked life into the Civil Rights Movement that eventually ended segregation in the United States. Rosa Parks’ most well known contribution to the Civil Rights Movement occurred when she refused to give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white man on December 1, 1955. “[This] 1955 incident that pushed the Civil Rights Movement forward was born of Parks’ own fatigue from the racial segregation she faced in daily life in Alabama …” (“Rosa Parks”). As a result, Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for breaking Montgomery’s segregation laws. As a result of this incident,

Several groups within the city’s black community, long dissatisfied with the treatment of blacks on public