What we get wrong about the Montgomery bus boycott and what we can learn from it | Jeanne Theoharis

"And yet, much of how it is remembered is romanticized, inaccurate and even dangerous distorting how we imagine social change happens. In the fable, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat, Black Montgomery residents rise up, a young Martin Luther King Jr is introduced to the world, and injustice is vanquished. The right action is all it takes furthering a mythology that, without deep preparation or sacrifice, Americans can make great change with a single act."

"Today, in the face of rising injustice, many criticize young activists for being too disruptive, too disorganized, too impractical. But, in fact, the Montgomery movement began much earlier and took much longer than we imagine and entailed tremendous sacrifice. It required hard choice after hard choice without evidence these actions would matter, and was considered too disruptive by many at the time all of which gives us important lessons for how to challenge injustice today."

"By the time Parks was 42 years old, she had been an activist for two decades, helping to turn Montgomery's NAACP into a more activist branch alongside the union stalwart ED Nixon. Over the years I have been rebelling against second-class citizenship, Parks said in a 1956 interview with the Los Angeles Sentinel. It didn't begin when I was arrested."

Memory of the Montgomery bus boycott has been romanticized into a fable of a single courageous act producing swift victory. The movement actually emerged from decades of sustained activism and organizing in Montgomery, including work by Rosa Parks and union stalwart ED Nixon. Residents engaged in years of demoralizing legal and voter-rights work before mass protest. A trickle of residents resisted bus mistreatment in the decade before Parks's arrest. The boycott required hard choices, repeated sacrifice, and controversial disruption without evidence of success. Effective social change depended on long-term preparation, collective persistence, and readiness to endure uncertainty.

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