Learn about Rosa Parks’ role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in this video excerpt from an interview with the iconic civil rights activist, recorded for the landmark series on the Civil Rights Movement, Eyes on the Prize. On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her refusal sparked a massive bus boycott that lasted 381 days, ending on December 21, 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on city buses was unconstitutional.