In 1954, a woman refused to yield her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott and launching the civil rights career of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Her name was

Rosa Parks.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, became a monument to the protests during the Civil Rights Movement in 1965 when

Alabama state troopers beat civil rights marchers with ropes, whip, and clubs, and used tear gas to try to break up the march.