An activist known as the 'mother of the freedom movement' whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

• A. Ella Baker
• B. Rosa Parks
• C. Jo Ann Robinson
• D. Claudette Colvin

Answer: (B)

The key idea is identifying the act and person whose refusal to yield a bus seat became the catalyst for a mass civil rights protest. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus on December 1, 1955. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a sustained, nonviolent protest organized by local leaders and the Montgomery Improvement Association. The boycott showed that a community could mobilize, coordinate, and sustain economic pressure to challenge segregation, and it helped propel the broader civil rights movement onto a national stage, with Rosa Parks becoming a powerful symbol of resistance. While Claudette Colvin also resisted segregation earlier, Parks’s act occurred at a moment that allowed a wider movement to respond and gain momentum.