What Activists Can Learn from Rosa Parks on the 70th Anniversary of Montgomery Bus Boycott

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to look at lessons from the Montgomery bus boycott, which started 70 years ago this month, December 5th, 1955, after the civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks was arrested days earlier for violating segregation laws when she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man. The yearlong boycott would help spark the civil rights movement.

This is Rosa Parks speaking to Pacific Radio in April of 1956 in the midst of the bus boycott.

ROSA PARKS: The driver said that if I refused to leave the seat, he would have to call the police. And I told him, “Just call the police.” He then called the officers of the law. They came and placed me under arrest, violation of the segregation law of the city and state of Alabama in transportation. I didn’t think I was violating any. I felt that I was not being treated right, and that I had a right to retain the seat that I had taken as a passenger on the bus. The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed, I suppose. They placed me under arrest.

AMY GOODMAN: Rosa Parks, in a Pacifica Radio interview in 1956.

For more, we’re joined by the historian Jeanne Theoharis, professor of political science at Brooklyn College, author of 13 books on the civil rights movement, including The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Also, there’s a young adult version of the book and a documentary by the same name. You just wrote a piece in The Guardian, Professor Theoharis, headlined “What we get wrong about the Montgomery bus boycott — and what we can learn from it.” Teach.

JEANNE THEOHARIS: Thank you. It’s so great to be here.

So, I think the ways that we now remember and honor the Montgomery bus boycott is that it was the right action with the right person, and it was sort of destined to succeed, and that in the United States, if you have the right action — right? — injustice is vanquished. And that is a comfortable story, but it’s not an accurate story.

All right. Let’s start with Rosa Parks. As you just mentioned, she is a longtime activist by this point. She’s been active for about 20 years. In fact, this is not going to be her first bus stand. She had been thrown off the bus by this very bus driver and other bus drivers because she refused the practice — some bus drivers would make Black people pay in the front, but have to get off and reboard in the back. She refused to do that, had been thrown off by this bus driver 12 years earlier and by other bus drivers for being uppity.

This is also not the first time somebody’s going to be arrested for refusing to give up their seat. In fact, in 1944, a woman by the name of Viola White refuses to give up her seat on the bus. She decides to pursue her legal case. And in response, the police rape her daughter. And then the state holds up her appeal for so long that Mrs. White actually dies before her appeal ever goes to court. And this is — they will learn from this, because Rosa Parks and E. D. Nixon, who are longtime — who will become the kind of two leaders of Montgomery’s NAACP in 1945 and, for the next decade, helped to transform it into a more activist branch, they learn from Viola White.

There’s a trickle of cases over that decade. A neighbor of Rosa Parks refuses to get off and reboard. He’s killed on the bus by police. And then, as many of us know, in March of 1955, Claudette Colvin, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, refuses to give up her seat on the bus. As the police take her from the bus, they manhandle her. Colvin, you know, resists their having their hands all over her. And so, police don’t only arrest Colvin on a segregation charge, but they arrest her on an assaulting an officer charge — Colvin is this very petite 15-year-old — and on a disturbing the peace charge.

Montgomery is outraged — Black Montgomery, sorry, not Montgomery. Black Montgomery is outraged. Rosa Parks starts fundraising for Colvin’s case. And then a couple things happen. The judge strategically throws out the segregation charge. He only convicts Colvin on an assault charge. So that’s the first issue that’s going to make this case hard to pursue. But the — 

AMY GOODMAN: We have two minutes.

JEANNE THEOHARIS: The second is that Colvin is a teenager, and many adults don’t trust a teenager.

So, let’s fast-forward. Now we’re at December 1st, 1955. There is nothing to suggest — what makes what Rosa Parks does so courageous is there is nothing to suggest that making a stand on this day will do anything. And I think that’s one of the biggest myths — right? — and one of the biggest misunderstandings of her courage. Part of what her courage is, is the ability to step forward again and again, without any sense that this is going to change anything, and say, “This is the line. And I refuse.”

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, so interesting. She had worked for years fighting against and exposing the rapes of Black women. She was deeply moved and horrified by the lynching and killing of Emmett Till. But as you said, she didn’t know if this would have an effect, but she sat down on that bus. Then there was Jo Ann Robinson.

JEANNE THEOHARIS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about that. Few days later, the bus boycott is launched. And she, in fact, Rosa Parks, launches Dr. Martin Luther King, a young pastor who had just moved to town.

JEANNE THEOHARIS: Right. So, late that — so, she’s bailed out a few hours later.

AMY GOODMAN: One minute.

JEANNE THEOHARIS: When E. D. Nixon sees that she is OK, because — that she hasn’t been physically hurt, he’s delighted. This could be a possible test case. She and her husband have to think. That night, she decides she will go forward. She calls a young Black lawyer named Fred Gray. That night, Fred Gray calls Jo Ann Robinson. Jo Ann Robinson is the head of the Women’s Political Council. They have a plan. In the middle of the night, Robinson sneaks into Alabama State, where she works, and, with the help of two students, runs off 35,000 leaflets. And the next morning, the women of the Women’s Political Council fan out over Montgomery with those leaflets. They’re originally calling for a one-day boycott.

AMY GOODMAN: But it ends up being a year. And one year later, the final result.

JEANNE THEOHARIS: The buses are desegregated. It’s not about walking. They organized this incredible carpool system. They set up 40 pickup stations all around the city. They’re giving, at its peak, 15,000 to 20,000 rides a day. All of this — right? — exceeds — every time people take a step, they — again, what is imagined gets broader. And they turn it from a one-day to a yearlong boycott, from first come, first served —

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s the story of Rosa Parks. Go to all our interviews with Jeanne Theoharis on the rebellious life of Rosa Parks. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.