“Many people don’t know the whole truth. . . .
I was just one of many who fought for freedom.”
Rosa Parks

Can you think of any others?

Protesting with Rosa Parks

tells the experiences of more than ninety Black travelers who refused to give up their rights on stagecoaches, steamboats, streetcars, ferries, buses, trains, planes, cars, and even elevators for almost two hundred years.

Coming August 1, 2025

from
NewSouth Books
University of Georgia Press

Paperback 448 pages
47 b&w images
6 in. x 9 in.

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The Protestors

The following is a roughly chronological list of the people whose protests against racial discrimination on stagecoaches, trains, streetcars, buses, airplanes, cars, and even elevators are recounted in Protesting with Rosa Parks. The names of several are not known. Names in boldface indicate persons who were killed as a result of their protest.

Emiliano Mundrucu * David Ruggles * Thomas Van Renselaer * Nathaniel A. Borden * Thomas Downing * Thomas Jinnings * [Unknown] * Frederick Douglass * Mary Newhall Green * [Unknown] * Thomas James * Shadrach Howard * Charles Lenox Remond * Jabez P. Campbell * William Saunders * Basil Dorsey * Sarah Parker Remond * J W. C. Pennington * Elizabeth Jennings * William Wells Brown * William Howard Day * Peter S. Porter * William Still * Hannibal Carter * Miles and Emma Robinson * Sojourner Truth * Mrs. Derry * Harriet Tubman * George Moses Horton * Octavius Catto * Charlotte Brown * William Brown * Emma Jane Turner * Mary Ellen Pleasant * Caroline LeCount * William Nichols * Josephine Decuir * Sallie J. Robinson * Jane Brown * Ida B. Wells-Barnett * Martha, Mary, Lucy, and Winnie Stewart * Lola Houck * William H. Councill * William H. Heard * Homer Plessy * Alice A. Bowie * Georgia Edwards * Mary Church Terrell * Charlotte Hawkins Brown * Benjamin J. Davis * Samuel Wilbert Tucker * “Bigger Thomas #5” * Arthur Wergs Mitchell * Pauli Murray * Elmer W. Henderson * Bayard Rustin * Hugh M. Gloster * Charles J. Reco * Henry Williams * Nora Green * Edward Green * Dovey Johnson Roundtree * Jackie Robinson * Booker T. Spicely * Irene Morgan * Viola White * Langston Hughes * Sarah Elizabeth Ray * Isaac Woodard * Conrad Lynn * Andrew Johnson * Joseph Felmet * Igal Roodenko * James Peck * Dennis Banks * Wally Nelson * Jo Ann Robinson * Thomas Edward Brooks * Sarah Louise Keys * Martha White * T. J. Jemison * Claudette Colvin * Aurelia Browder * Mary Louise Smith * Susie McDonald * Rosa Parks * Wilhelmina Jakes * Carrie Patterson * Bruce Boyntom * Richard Burdine * Henry Nichols * John Lewis * Sandra Bland * Philando Castile * Tyre Nichols

Praise for
Protesting with Rosa Parks

“The fight for justice didn’t start or end with one person, but by the blood shed by countless individuals. I was a 15-year-old girl when I refused to give up my seat, but I knew it was my constitutional right and I wasn’t breaking any laws except the unwritten Jim Crow law of segregation. This history is about more than a bus seat; it’s about standing up against a racist system that had oppressed colored people for generations. I hope this book reminds us of how far we’ve come and still have to go.”

Claudette Colvin
Plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, which made travel segregation unconstitutional

Claudette Colvin, c. 1953

While Rosa Parks has been venerated for her instrumental role in the Civil Rights Movement, John K. Bollard’s Protesting with Rosa Parks shows her courageous actions have deep roots in the Black protest tradition. Having unearthed lesser-known stories of resistance to segregated public conveyances, Bollard’s book demonstrates the centrality of such efforts within broader movements to end slavery, Jim Crow, and racist policing practices. Indeed, this engaging, well-written book provides an original contribution to the history of the Black protest tradition - from the Early Republic to our present day.

Ousmane Power-Greene
E. Franklin Frazier Professor of History, Clark University

Rosa Parks, Dec. 5, 1955

Protesting with Rosa Parks: From Stagecoaches to Driving While Black is deeply informed by the lives, and at times the deaths, of nearly a hundred African Americans as they traveled the country. This book is a model of how biography can bring social history to life across a span of almost two hundred years. Of special note is David Ruggles, in effect the first “freedom rider,” a significant thinker and strategist whose willingness to put his body on the line repeatedly in the name of freedom was truly revolutionary. When we see someone today protesting inequality, at risk of being vilified, beaten, and arrested, we are witnessing the legacy of David Ruggles and the others in this outstanding book.

Steven J. Niven, Executive Editor
Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University