Honorary Member

Civil Rights, NAACP Activist identified by the United States Congress as \"the first lady of civil rights,\" and \"the mother of the freedom movement.\" This pioneering member had refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, an action that resulted in her arrest and the beginning of the Montgomery, Alabama 382 day bus boycott (one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history,starting December 1, 1955) and ended when the Supreme Court ruled segregation on public buses unlawful. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. She was identified in 1999 by Time Magazine as \"one of the 20 most influential people of the 20th century.\" Upon her death in 2005 she became the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, and on her centennial birthday (February 4, 2013) she became the first African American woman to have a statue in the United States Capitol building.