A transit company in Virginia has honoured African American civil rights activist Rosa Parks on what would be her 103rd birthday by reserving the front seat of each bus for her.

The Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC) put commemorative signs on seats, which read: "It all started on a bus" and showed the well-known photograph of Parks sitting towards the front of the bus.

Electronic header signs on GRTC buses also displayed special messages to honour Parks and bus drivers kept headlights on all day to "represent her light," GRTC said.

This tribute to Parks has become a tradition carried out by GRTC each year as part of their celebrations of Black History Month.

Parks is famous for refusing to give up her a seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955 when the white section of the bus was filled.

Parks was arrested for civil disobedience and so followed a year-long bus boycott by the black residents of Montgomery, which caused buses to sit idle for months, resulting in great economic stress to the city transit system.

The boycott ended when the US Supreme Court declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses were unconstitutional.

Parks, known as the "mother of the freedom movement", passed away at the age of 92 in 2005 and was the first woman in American history to lie in state in the US Capitol.

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