A major force in shaping the development of the Civil Rights Movement in America, Ella Baker was the premiere behind-the-scenes organizer, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) headed by Martin Luther King, Jr., and an inspiring force behind the creation of the Student Non-Violent …

Baker served as the director of SCLC and Martin Luther King, Jr., as the SCLC’s first president. She was highly respected for her work and abilities in organizing communities and civil rights projects. She ran the organization’s first project, the Crusade for Citizenship, a voter registration campaign.

Baker was married for about 21 years to her college sweetheart, T.J. “Bob” Roberts. Their busy lives made marriage difficult, and they divorced in 1958.

A granddaughter of slaves who graduated valedictorian from Raleigh’s Shaw University in 1927, Baker spent nearly half a century raising the political consciousness of Americans, and played a major role in three of the 20th century’s most influential civil rights groups: the National Association or the Advancement of …

On December 1, 1955, a seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded a bus at 6 p.m. in Montgomery, Alabama, and sat in the “colored” section. Several stops later, she refused to give up her seat to a white man.

On December 1, 1955, the modern civil rights movement began when Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

5 Fascinating Facts About Rosa Parks

• Rosa Parks’ mother was a teacher and her father was a carpenter.
• She graduated high school in 1933.
• Parks became involved in the Civil Rights Movement as early as December 1943.
• Rosa and her husband were active members of the League of Women Voters.

The event that triggered the boycott took place in Montgomery on December 1, 1955, after seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white passenger on a city bus. Local laws dictated that African American passengers sat at the back of the bus while whites sat in front.

Sixty years ago Tuesday, a bespectacled African American seamstress who was bone weary of the racial oppression in which she had been steeped her whole life, told a Montgomery bus driver, “No.” He had ordered her to give up seat so white riders could sit down.

Women’s rights movement, also called women’s liberation movement, diverse social movement, largely based in the United States, that in the 1960s and ’70s sought equal rights and opportunities and greater personal freedom for women. It coincided with and is recognized as part of the “second wave” of feminism.