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15 women involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott; Rosa Parks's mugshot is the center.

The Women Behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott

We've heard about Rosa Parks and her crucial role, but Parks was just one of many women involved.
Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., on Feb. 22, 1956, two months after refusing to give up her seat in a bus for a White passenger.
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Pitting Rosa Parks Against Claudette Colvin Distorts History

A new documentary explores the origins of the Montgomery Bus Boycott — with lessons on how we see movements.
Picture of Claudette Colvin

Before Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin Refused to Give Up Her Seat on a Bus. She’s Still on Probation.

Colvin, 82, is headed to court in Montgomery, Ala., to petition for her record to be cleared.
Yearbook photo of a an African American girl, in front of newspaper headlines and pictures of her as an adult

Meet Claudette Colvin, the 15-Year-Old Who Came Before Rosa Parks

Claudette Colvin is a Civil Rights hero you've probably never heard of. In 1955, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, months before Rosa Parks.
Jo Ann Robinson's mug shot.

This Unheralded Woman Actually Organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Jo Ann Robinson is unfortunately overlooked by history.
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Commentary of a Black Southern Bus Rider

Rosa Parks discusses her refusal to give up a seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955.
Rosa Parks' mugshot.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

“This dramatic display of unity may well inspire the Negro residents of other Southern cities to similar action.”
Daisy Bates speaking at the March on Washington.

How Might the Civil Rights Movement Looked Different With Women at the Forefront?

Why women civil rights organizers marginalized at this event, and how that affects our collective memory of the struggle.
African Americans boarding an integrated bus, following the Supreme Court ruling ending the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956. The boycott inspired many US socialists to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the civil rights struggle.

Socialists Organized in the 1950s Civil Rights Movement

In 1950s America, the Cold War was raging, but socialists were playing key roles in the early civil rights movement.
Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and John Morsell hold a press conference in 1963

A Vision of Racial and Economic Justice

A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin knew the fates of the civil rights and labor movements were intertwined. The same is true today.
Illustration of a woman taping crime scene photos, reports, and newspaper articles to a wall.

The Hidden Life of Rosa Parks

A woman who repeatedly challenged racial violence and the prejudiced systems protecting its perpetrators.

Rosa Parks and the Power of Oneness

Rosa Parks shook the world of Jim Crow by refusing to give up her seat to a white man on her way home from work.

Claudette Colvin: 'A Teenage Rosa Parks'

What makes a hero? Why do we remember some stories and not others?
A 1963 photo of Martin Luther King Jr. addressing the thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.
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Campus Protests Are Called Disruptive. So Was the Civil Rights Movement

Like student protesters today, Martin Luther King Jr. and other 1960s civil rights activists were criticized as disruptive and disorderly.

The Forgotten Lessons of Truly Effective Protest

Organizing is a kind of alchemy: it turns alienation into connection, despair into dedication, and oppression into strength.
Black and white photo of two African American men standing in front of March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom sign.

The Obamas’ “Rustin”: Fun Tricks You Can Do on the Past

The project of “reclamation and celebration” proceeds from an impulse to rediscover black Greats who by force of their own will make “change.”
Martin Luther King Jr. with other activists and children.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Perilous Power of Respectability

We revere the man and revile the strategy, but King knew what he was doing.
Police officers patrolling the streets at the start of the Birmingham Campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, May 1963. Frank Rockstroh/Getty

The Police Dog As Weapon of Racial Terror

Police K-9 units in the United States emerged during the Civil Rights era. This was not a coincidence.
Album cover for "We Insist!", which features African American men sitting at a lunch counter

The Sounds of Struggle

Sixty years ago, a pathbreaking jazz album fused politics and art in the fight for Black liberation. Black artists are taking similar strides today.
Julian Bond

What Julian Bond Taught Me About Politics and Power

Lessons about organizing from the SNCC co-founder.

Rosa Parks on Police Brutality: The Speech We Never Heard

The Northern Student Movement considered inviting Rosa Parks to give a speech on police brutality, but ultimately decided against it.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Meaning of Emancipation

He was a revolutionary, if one committed to nonviolence. But nonviolence does not exhaust his philosophy.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.

“A More Beautiful and Terrible History” Corrects the Fables Told of the Civil Rights Movement

A new book bursts the bubble on what we’ve learned about the Civil Rights era to show a larger movement with layers.

As Goes the South, So Goes the Nation

History haunts, but Alabama changes.

When the Revolution Was Televised

MLK was a master television producer, but the networks had a narrow view of what the black struggle for equality could look like.

The United States & 'The Young and Fearless of Heart'

The March for Our Lives organizers are not an anomaly, but follow in a long tradition of youth activism in America.
Recy Taylor

Recy Taylor's Truth

How one black woman's campaign for justice after a rape by six white men shaped the struggle for equality—and the #MeToo movement.
Reagan signing the bill establishing Martin Luther King Day.

The Sanitizing of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks

On the uses and abuses of civil rights heroes.

Southern History, Deep Fried

John T. Edge's "The Potlikker Papers" looks at multiculturalism, conflict, and civil rights in the American South—all through the history of the region's food.
Caricature of Martin Luther King's head

The House of the Prophet

Martin Luther King Jr. was the galvanizing voice of the civil rights struggle, an uncompromising, complicated figure who soared in the pulpit.

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