Were Rosa Parks and Freedom Riders the first ones to use a bus to protest/change?

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Rosa Parks wasn't even the first woman (or second, or third, or fourth ...) to get arrested for being black and refusing to give up her seat on a bus. She wasn't even the first woman arrested in Alabama for this. There was even a supreme court case over some of those previous arrests (which the NAACP ultimately won) in 1956.

Fighting that particular law was an ongoing thing. In fact, fighting every Jim Crow law was an ongoing thing, going clear back to the establishment of the laws in question.

As for interstate mass transit, not only were there previous incidents on busses to the Freedom Rides, but prior to that when such transit was carried out mostly on trains, they were a primary venue for social action. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Pullmen was a prime mover in the Civil Rights fight from their founding in 1925 until the decline of train passenger traffic in the 1950's. They were instrumental in getting racial discrimination banned in defense contracting and the military in the 1940's. It was a BSCP official who went to India to learn the mechanics of nonviolent resistance from Gandhi, and 7 years later helped teach them Martin Luther King for use in Alabama.

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