Dr. Nykia Greene-Young
The story of the protest often begins with the arrest of Rosa Parks. However, long before Parks made her historic stand, young Black women were already resisting bus segregation in Montgomery. In March 1955, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat. She was handcuffed, arrested, and brutalized by police. Civil rights leaders feared white retaliation against a young Black girl, and her story was pushed to the margins of the movement.
Other Black women, including Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, and Susie McDonald were also arrested for resisting bus segregation. These women became the plaintiffs in the federal case Browder v. Gayle (1956), the ruling that ultimately struck down bus segregation nationwide. Their names rarely appear in narratives of the movement, or textbooks, and they still do not receive the recognition they deserve. Yet their political labor, strength, and resistance produced the legal victory and policy change whose impact we still live with today.
Many women organized the movement behind the scenes, including Jo Ann Robinson of the Women’s Political Council (WPC). They drafted policy demands and applied political pressure on city officials, while building collective political power. Others used whatever they had at their disposal to sustain the boycott. Georgia Gilmore turned her kitchen into a fundraising hub. Countless Black domestic workers—many still unnamed—along with teachers, mothers, and students, made the 381-day boycott possible.
This extraordinary accomplishment was a policy legacy built by a community of Black women that reshaped American democracy. The boycott served as a catalyst for the most consequential civil rights reforms. Its success helped lay the foundation for federal enforcement of transportation desegregation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the expansion of Black political organizations and civic participation.
Yet the conditions these women challenged were never fully resolved. Now, seventy years later, we must ask: Where are we? Why are we not further along? And how do we move forward amid a political landscape defined by rollbacks of rights won over the last seven decades? Black women, low-income people and many working-class communities still bear the brunt of transportation inequities, economic exclusion, political disenfranchisement, discrimination, and state surveillance—issues that were central in 1955. These same groups of people disproportionately rely on public transit systems that remain underfunded, unsafe, and disconnected from jobs and economic hubs.
The 70th Anniversary should demand specific, measurable policy action, including:
· fully funded and equitable transit expansion in Black and low-income communities;
· safety improvements at bus stops where Black women and other vulnerable people are exposed and subject to harassment and violence;
· equitable wages and labor protections for Black women and all in the labor force who are not making livable wages; and
· fare policies that create fare-free or reduced-fare systems for low-income riders and essential workers.
While these policies may begin at the state and local levels, they must ultimately become national initiatives.
The political labor that Black women in Montgomery practiced—organizing, strategizing, creating, and demanding democracy—was crucial. Yet today, their legacy faces renewed threats: voter suppression, the criminalization of protest, the pushing of Black women out of the labor force, and retaliation against Black women organizers, political figures, and elected officials.
This anniversary must bring renewed demands for the restoration and expansion of the Voting Rights Act; federal protections for protest and nonviolent direct action; and investment in Black women-led research, organizations, and public policy institutions. It must also inspire a national Black Women’s Policy Agenda centered on economic justice, criminal justice, care work, environmental justice, maternal health, mental health, and community safety. Black women and girls tend to be the most marginalized. Therefore, when policies lift Black women and girls, they lift everyone.
The boycott was never simply a story about buses. It was a story of Black women and girls demanding structural change for themselves, their communities, and American democracy. We honor the work of Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, Susie McDonald, Jo Ann Robinson, Rosa Parks, Georgia Gilmore, and all the countless women who fought. Their names must be spoken together, and their policy demands must be seen and acted upon.
Seventy years later, the United States celebrates the symbolism of their sacrifice but has not fulfilled the change they demanded. The change needed to make this democracy more equitable and fair for all. This moment calls for more than commemoration—it calls for action. We must protect Black women’s political power, mobility, and economic futures because they are the fighters for democracy. The Black women of Montgomery gave us the blueprint in 1955.
______
Dr. Nykia Greene-Young is domestic policy coordinator at the W.E.B. Du Bois Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy at Clark Atlanta University and an adjunct professor of political science at Clark Atlanta University.
