ATLANTA – Black History Month in Atlanta is off to an exciting start with a series of events celebrating what would be the 111th birthday of Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks. On Dec. 1, 1955, Parks was ordered to give up her seat in the “colored” section of a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white man, and she refused. Her act of defiance sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott in which people refused to ride the city bus, costing the city thousands per day.