60 years on, heroes of Montgomery bus boycott recalled
US News
60 years on, heroes of Montgomery bus boycott recalled
While Rosa Parks became a symbol of the U.S. civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat on a segregated Alabama bus, the 60th anniversary of her arrest is also set to highlight lesser-known pioneers of the bus boycott she sparked. Parks made history by taking a stand alongside other desegregation pioneers like Claudette Colvin, a black teenager arrested nine months earlier in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, said Fred Gray, a lawyer who represented both women.
We lionize Rosa Parks, but … she is a symbol for something larger than just Rosa Parks. … They represent a larger group of people that are faceless and nameless, who animated this movement and made it possible.
Howard Robinson, an archivist and instructor at Alabama State University
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton kicked off the two-day event and spoke from the same pulpit where Martin Luther King Jr. preached his Sunday sermons as pastor from 1954 to 1960. Bus tours, lectures and youth-oriented summits are also scheduled to commemorate the boycott, which launched in protest of Parks’ 1955 arrest and brought to prominence a lead organizer, Martin Luther King Jr. The anniversary bookends a year of civil rights milestones in the United States, including the 50th anniversary of a historic march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery.
