Remembering the Boycott

Cities like Montgomery, Selma, and Greensboro are remembered as the great battlefields of the civil rights movement, so it can be easy to forget that this struggle was conducted across the entire South, not to mention the entire country. Baton Rouge itself was the site of a major civil rights milestone: in 1953, the first anti-segregation bus boycott in a major American city took place in Louisiana’s capital. While its successes were arguably limited, it was a direct inspiration and guideline for Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks’ better remembered efforts in Montgomery two years later.

Baton Rouge’s bus boycott is not widely commemorated today—it doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page, which is a real snub in today’s Internet-centric world—but that’s about to change. Baton Rouge has been selected as a participant city in Toni Morrison’s “Bench by the Road Project, ”a nationwide and international effort to acknowledge and celebrate places important to African American history. Baton Rouge’s memorial bench will be the sixteenth in this series.

Bench Project Co-chair Lori Latrice Martin described the city’s selection as an honor: “The lessons learned from what Baton Rouge residents taught in the early 1950s are still being used in this country and abroad. We hope that the addition of the bench in Baton Rouge will spark an interest in learning more about the contributions of African Americans in Baton Rouge and beyond...”

The unveiling itself will take place on February 6, 2016, at the McKinley Alumni Center where the bench will be permanently situated.