Popular culture mainstays like television commercials or your favorite advertising jingles never made it around to rendering the label of “patriot” to African Americans. The same is true for grade-school textbooks, small-town Independence Day celebrations, and propaganda seeking America’s “best and brightest.”
When I was growing up, the terms “patriot” and “patriotic” were hardly, if ever, used to name or describe Black people. My children and my students likely share this experience.
As a student and teacher of history, I’m saddened by this because Black people are indeed patriots. Acclaimed artist Amy Sherald believes this, too. In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, she explained why: “I don’t think there’s anybody more patriotic than a Black person,” she said. “We’ve been here since the inception of this idea of what ‘American’ is. We are deeply ingrained in the fabric of this country. This country would not be if it was not for us . . . . I’m the definition of an American.”
Today, the idea of what it means to be an American is being tested by an administration that seems not to care about who Americans are; an administration hell-bent on depriving Americans of the funding to access needed resources and services, while simultaneously terrorizing both Americans and the foreign-born alike by way of state violence. This has caused many to ask, “Is this who we are? Is this what America is?” If you were to ask African Americans this question, the answer would likely be, “Yes, it is.”
Of course, there might be a difference of opinion from Black conservatives or even some Black liberals, and certainly from some members of the Black bourgeoisie. But if you were to ask the masses of Black people, they’d tell you “yes” and provide you with the evidence: enslavement, segregation, mass incarceration, lynching, redlining, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), and more.
But at a time when folks are strategizing ways to combat a fascist regime that controls all three branches of government, there is a lot that human rights activists and advocates can learn from the African American experience. Because, as Sherald noted, there isn’t anyone more patriotic than Black people, and Black patriotism was born of the necessity of Black resistance; and Black resistance is what pushes the United States to become closer to being true to what it says on paper, to paraphrase the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. An example of Black resistance history that activists and advocates can learn from is the Montgomery bus boycott, which began seventy years ago on December 1, 1955.
The Montgomery bus boycott was an organized strike against the public transportation system, specifically the buses, in Montgomery, Alabama. The aim was to end bus segregation in the city. It is important to note that while the boycott commenced with Rosa Parks’s arrest for resisting a bus driver’s order to give up her seat for a white man, she was not the first person to break this unjust law. It was part of a coordinated effort that saw four other Black women be arrested before Parks, including a fifteen-year-old named Claudette Colvin, who was manhandled by police and taken to jail rather than juvenile detention.
Asked why the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) had rallied around Parks instead of her, Colvin later said, “I knew what the strategy was. They wanted her up front because they knew I was a minor, and people were not going to listen to a teenager.” She added, “They wanted Mrs. Parks because people still believed that fairer-skinned people get more acceptance than darker-complexioned people.”
Nevertheless, the importance of Colvin’s arrest in March 1955 wasn’t lost on the Black people of Montgomery. That, along with Parks’s arrest, led the Women’s Political Council, under the helm of Alabama State College professor Jo Ann Robinson, to print 50,000 leaflets that were dispersed throughout the community, calling for a boycott of the buses. Early on December 2, Robinson had consulted with local labor leader E.D. Nixon to expand the idea of a boycott.
The community agreed, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was selected to be the spokesperson for the people. And with that, the boycott commenced.
Today, we often focus on the boycott’s outcome: a win for African Americans in Montgomery and opponents of segregation everywhere. But many untold stories define a victory; stories of small triumphs and tragedies that have significant implications for how a war is won or lost.
To be sure, the Montgomery bus boycott was a war waged on Jim Crow, and it wasn’t easily won. But this war offers lessons to the struggles for freedom of our day—from Black people boycotting Target to the No Kings protesters.
The first lesson is that the MIA’s boycott was fueled and led by a demand—or rather, three to be exact: courteous treatment of Black people by white bus drivers; first-come, first-served seating for all, with Black people seating from the rear of the bus and white people from the front; and the hiring of Black bus drivers. No protest, boycott, or action against an authority or institution is viable without a demand. If there is no demand, the aggrieved have no evidence of an injustice and no identifiable license to pressure an oppressor to provide a remedy. Protest action of any kind must have demands for the adversary.
Also, the resistance—boycotting the buses—wasn’t a one-off event. It was consistent and persistent. In other words, you could guarantee that it would happen, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it (although groups like the White Citizens Council tried). Engaging in resistance against anti-Black racism, imperialism, and various forms of capitalism cannot be a singular event or gathering. It must be consistent and persistent to keep the people involved at all levels and to keep the pressure on the adversary, whether it’s the Trump Administration or someone else. A protest that lacks a commitment to consistent work on resistance (with no long gaps in the timeline) won’t work.
Lastly, the boycott did not come without sacrifices on the part of the participants. In his seminal work, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, Taylor Branch spoke of the sacrifices made by both the boycott’s leaders and its rank-and-file members. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, dealt with the former’s multiple arrests, along with threatening phone calls and the bombing of their home. Other MIA leadership dealt with similar things.
Participants in the protest balanced the dangers of police harassment and loss of employment with the inconveniences of managing household responsibilities and securing transportation to work, even if it meant walking in the elements. Unintended sacrifices certainly test one’s resolve, but they also push us to carry our efforts through so that any sacrifices made aren’t for naught. Protest action requires some sacrifice as an investment in the work of justice.
There aren’t enough words to speak of the many lessons offered by the Montgomery bus boycott. Another one deserving of our understanding is the foundation laid and the leadership provided by Black women, who initiated, sustained, and completed the boycott with their strength, courage, and grace. Or the strategy of simultaneously conducting the boycott and a federal lawsuit to end segregation. But with the words written here, activists and advocates alike can take this example and apply it to current protest actions and social movements—not for mere strategizing, but to equip everyday people, whose involvement is critical—to see what protests and social justice movements actually require to yield a victory.
Americans are too delusional about what protests are. Many believe that simply voting or participating in a single march will make society’s oppressors yield to the will of those they look down upon, exploit, and refuse to consider human beings. Resistance takes vision and resolve to be successful.
It’s long past time that we look to people whose resistance is a way of life to instruct us how to achieve the life we deserve.