Google honors Rosa Parks with anniversary doodle

Google celebrates the 55th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus.

Google celebrates 55th anniversary of Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat on the #2857 bus.

google.com screengrab

December 1, 2010

Today marks the 55th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the #2857 bus in Alabama.

Google celebrates this day in history with a new doodle of a school bus with four children, replacing the "ogl" in the word Google. Click on the logo and you will be redirected to articles about Ms. Parks.

On December 1, 1955, during a time of racial segregation, Parks sat at the front of the black section of the bus, when all the seats in the front were taken the bus driver asked Parks to give up her seat so a white passenger could sit down.

She refused and was arrested, five days later boycotts on the bus system lead by Martin Luther King, Jr. lasted 381 days.

Later, Parks moved from Alabama to Detroit and began working for Congressman John Conyers. In the late eighties, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development to help young people, who are otherwise not able, reach their full potential.

After her death five years ago, Conyers spoke of her, "I think that she, as the mother of the new civil rights movement, has left an impact not just on the nation, but on the world."

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Google has celebrated other anniversaries with doodles. What has been your favorite? Maybe The Wizard of Oz, Pac-Man, or The Flintstones. Let us know in the comments below.