January 21, 2020: Expanding Civil Rights Memories: Women and the Bus Boycott

[For this year’s MLK week series, I’ll highlight under-remembered figures, histories, and stories that can expand our collective memories of the Civil Rights Movement. Leading up to a special weekend post on 21^st century voices!]

Two years ago, I focused the second piece for my bimonthly “Considering History” column for the Saturday Evening Post on the African American women whose anti-sexual assault activism led directly to the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and a key origin point for the Civil Rights Movement. (A piece that, as I note there, was indebted to historian Danielle McGuire’s amazing book At the Dark End of the Street.) Those histories significantly change and expand our collective memories of the boycott, of Rosa Parks, of the Civil Rights Movement, and of the long, 20^th century evolution of what we’ve come to know as the #MeToo movement. For all those reasons, I would ask you to read that Saturday Evening Post piece (and ideally McGuire’s book as well) and help add these women and this activism into our collective memories!

Next post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Civil Rights figures, histories, or stories you’d want to add to our collective memories?