I Want Those Seats:\u27 Rosa Parks, Buses, and the Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

This lecture will explore the reasons why segregated buses were the focal point of what historians call “the early civil rights movement.” Far from being simply the spontaneous action of a lone woman, what Rosa Parks accomplished in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955 was but one instance of a growing spirit of resolve among African Americans. Segregated buses were mobile microcosms of the Jim Crow system, driven (in a figurative sense) by the intention to insult and subordinate black people, but driven (in a literal sense) by bus drivers whose anomalous position in segregated society opened the door for the nascent civil rights movement