What happened on December 1 - Interesting US History

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A Website Devoted to Interesting Events in U.S. History

ON THIS DAY IN UNITED STATES HISTORY

December 1, 1955

Rosa Parks Refuses to Give Up Her Seat

On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress and civil rights activist, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Her actions sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and lead to a social protest campaign that resulted in a Supreme Court decision that made laws requiring segregated buses unconstitutional.

Rosa Parks was born February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley and Leona Edwards. Under Jim Crow laws, black and white people were segregated in the South requiring them to sit in separate sections on the bus. Although her autobiography describes acts of kindness to her from white strangers in her early years, she also endured severe racism. She described how her grandfather guarded the front door with a shotgun and how a school for blacks was burned and the faculty harassed by the white community. Rosa Parks was eventually considered by the U.S. Congress to be the "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Right Movement".

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◦	Myth: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin
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◦	Myth: In April of 1775, Paul Revere rode through the streets from Boston to Lexington yelling "The British Are Coming"
◦	Myth: The Pilgrims lived in log cabins
◦	Myth: During the Civil War, Lincoln once said about Grant's drinking: "If I knew what brand he used, I'd send every general a barrel"
◦	Myth: Charles Lindbergh was the first man to fly nonstop across the Atlantic
◦	Myth: George Washington fathered several children by his slaves
◦	Myth: The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on Bunker Hill
◦	Myth: When Confederate president, Jefferson Davis was arrested after the Civil War, he was wearing his wife's clothes
◦	Myth: The Liberty Bell rang on July 4, 1776 in celebration of American independence
◦	Myth: The reason Germany got off to such a fast start in World War II was because of its pre-war preparations

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