For Immediate Release: November 30, 2005
Contact: Ilana Sabban (202) 588-7206


Teaching the Montgomery Bus Boycott: 50 Years Later
Teaching for Change Creates Mythbusters Quiz to Honor 50th Anniversary of the Bus Boycott

Think you know a lot about the Montgomery Bus Boycott? Here’s a pop quiz: Who was responsible for the desegregation of city busses in Montgomery, Alabama? If you said Rosa Parks, you’re only half right. You’ve left out Jo Ann Robinson, E. D. Nixon, and the 50,000 people who walked and carpooled to work for 381 days.

On the 50th Anniversary of Rosa Parks’ civil disobedience, it is time to honor the complete story of the boycott and the thousands of people whose sacrifice and courage sustained it and changed the course of our history. In too many American classrooms, the boycott is stripped down to one key phrase “Rosa Parks was tired.” This, however, discounts the strategic brilliance and courage of Rosa Parks and the African American community in Montgomery. It is important for students to know that at the time of the boycott Rosa Parks was the Secretary of the local NAACP and had a history of activism. It is also critical for students to learn about the 50,000 citizens who sacrificed for over a year during the boycott, the many people who refused to give up their seats before Rosa Parks, and the planning prior to Rosa Parks’ action which created the groundwork for this triumphant event.

Learning more about the citizens of Montgomery and the actions of the politically astute Rosa Parks, puts Rosa Parks in the context of a greater social struggle for justice and helps students learn their role in society. The Montgomery Bus Boycott has the capacity to connect students to their history, learn that you don’t have to be a hero to change the world, and develop a critical analysis of U.S. history. The empowerment potential of this story, however, is often lost in the many myths about the boycott that have circulated classrooms for years. In honor of the 50th anniversary of this historic event and to combat these myths, Teaching for Change has created the Montgomery Bus Boycott Mythbusters Quiz. To test your knowledge or find out what your children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews have learned in their classrooms, take the quiz which is posted online at www.teachingforchange.org.

The Mythbusters quiz is based on the award winning book Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, which has been chosen by the Smithsonian Institutions Traveling Exhibition Service as the core curriculum for its exhibit, 381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story. The goal of this book is to move beyond heroes and holidays, to uncover and humanize the stories of the many people who, like Rosa Parks, challenged the government in the name of justice.

Teaching for Change provides teachers and parents with the tools to transform schools into socially equitable centers of learning where students become architects of a better future.