This week we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955 for declining to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, so that a white passenger would not have to stand. Through one simple, but extraordinarily brave, act of individual protest, Mrs. Parks became a global icon embodying the ideals of justice and tolerance. However, as she herself later said, “Many people don’t know the whole truth … I was just one of many who fought for freedom.” That may seem obvious when spoken so plainly, yet most Americans cannot readily name anyone else who did what Mrs. Parks is most famous for — refusing to give up her seat, her rights, and her dignity. Her calm refusal led to the 381-day-long Montgomery bus boycott and to a U.S. District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle, affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 20, 1956, declaring segregation unconstitutional in public transportation.
Once again we find ourselves in a time of increasing public protest. But in spite of the massive crowds turning out this year for the “Good Trouble,” “No Kings” and other protests, a nagging question keeps whispering, “What good is it? We march, chant, and listen to speeches, yet nothing changes.” Here we might look back to Rosa Parks and beyond for a deeper understanding.
Images from the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott were seared into the memories of millions of Americans, through newspapers, television, and radio, and that sustained protest ultimately made transportation segregation illegal. However, it did not immediately change the behavior of state and local governments and many citizens. Thus it was followed by boycotts in Tallahassee, Florida, and Jackson, Tennessee, by the 1960 student sit-in movement in various states, and by the Freedom Rides of 1961. These, in turn, helped inspire the 1963 March on Washington, and the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. Collectively these events established the model of nonviolent protest as a means of moving government and the courts towards social and racial justice and equity. Opposition to U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam took to the streets in 1965, further demonstrating the power of ordinary citizens to influence even military and global matters through united action and protest. More recently, the 2017 Women’s March on Washington and the nationwide and worldwide demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 revealed the potential reach of public protest.
But there is an even longer history before the events of Dec. 1, 1955. When he was violently thrown out of a stagecoach on his way from New York to Newark, New Jersey, in 1834, the Black abolitionist and activist David Ruggles wrote, “[The coachman] had taken my LABOR, trampled upon my FEELINGS, and he was robbing me of my RIGHTS, my LIBERTY, my ALL!”
For the next 130 years many people followed the example set by Ruggles and refused to give up their right to an equal place on trains, steamboats, streetcars, buses, planes, and even elevators. Some of these protestors became famous civil rights leaders: Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and John Lewis, for example. Others played highly important roles, though they may be less well-known today: William Still, a leader of the Underground Railroad; Mary Ellen Pleasant, who helped integrate the San Francisco streetcars; Pauli Murray, a groundbreaking civil rights activist, lawyer, and Episcopal priest; and Bayard Rustin, who taught nonviolent theory to Martin Luther King, Jr., to name just a few. Many more are not as widely known, except perhaps locally. Others remain nameless. Some, tragically, were killed on the spot for demanding their rights.
This is not to suggest that public protest is pointless, ineffective, or too slow. Quite the opposite. Protest is often necessary to bring about change and to constrain those in power from overstepping their authority or failing to exercise it judiciously. The right to vote and the right to protest go hand in hand. Your personal presence in a crowd of a thousand or a hundred thousand may feel insignificant. But each person’s presence, whether for a single day, a five day march, or over the span of 200 years, is a consequential expression of the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that this country has so long striven to achieve.
John K. Bollard, a resident of Florence, is the author of “Protesting with Rosa Parks: From Stagecoaches to Driving While Black” (University of Georgia Press, 2025).