Widely known as the woman who, tired after a long day’s work, refused to give up her seat when ordered to do so by a Montgomery, Alabama bus driver. In fact, prior to her defiance on December 1, 1954, Parks was a local secretary for the NAACP and had heard Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermons saying that segregation needed to be challenged. She was not the first African American to challenge segregated buses, but E.D. Nixon, head of the local NAACP, believed she could withstand the threats and pressures and so organized a boycott of Montgomery’s buses. The Montgomery Improvement Association formed quickly with King appointed as the leader, and within a year the bus company was forced to desegregate. Rosa Parks was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor by Bill Clinton.