Beyond the bus: Uncovering the real story of Rosa Parks

27/10/2025 35 min

Listen "Beyond the bus: Uncovering the real story of Rosa Parks"

Episode Synopsis


She’s known as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted over a year and inspired other nonviolent resistance. Her name – along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – is the most recognizable of the civil rights icons. Yet, on this 20th anniversary of her death, there are efforts to sanitize her life story and erase her legacy from public archives, schoolbooks and libraries. Two historians join us to set the record straight.

More episodes of the podcast Under the Radar with Callie Crossley