Dateline December 5, 1955 – Rosa Parks and E.D. Nixon began the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It lasted for just over one year.
This is something that happened within my lifetime. It’s not all that long ago: a mere 57 years.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott didn’t end racism, of course. It’s just not institutionalized and is far less overt. Hell, President Obama’s reelection hasn’t ended racism. It’s just done through dog whistles these days.
Some years later my father had a store on 12th Street in Detroit, the city to which Parks had moved in 1957. Twelfth Street was at the epicenter of the 1967 riot and was eventually renamed Rosa Parks Boulevard.
Rosa Parks died in Detroit on October 24, 2005.
Further reading: