Rosa Parks sitting on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1956. (Getty Images) The boycott was a defining moment in the civil rights movement and helped thrust Martin Luther King Jr. and his commitment to nonviolent resistance into the spotlight. Read on for more details on the events surrounding the boycott. Rosa Parks was not the first African American to refuse to give up her seat A 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, was arrested on March 2, 1955 – nine months before Parks – for refusing to give up her seat aboard a Montgomery bus. While Black leaders in the city prepared to protest, they stopped short after discovering that Colvin was pregnant and believed she was not an appropriate figure for their cause, according to History.com.