Two hundred miles east, in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old black activist called Rosa Parks was devastated by the news that Emmett Till’s murderers had walked free. On 1 December 1955, she finished her shift at the department store where she worked and waited to catch the bus home.
At the time, transport was segregated in the, told me: “Especially in the early days of buses, there was a worst seat on the bus: the seat over the wheel at the back. It was much higher than the other seats and had no springs. From the very beginning, bus companies would relegate black travellers to these unpleasant back seats that people wouldn’t sit in voluntarily.” Black passengers could also be made to vacate their seat at any time, if a white passenger got on and needed somewhere to sit down.
