August 29, 1992

Jo Ann Robinson may have been the person most instrumental in planning and publicizing the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott that catapulted Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to international fame. While not as well-known as Parks or King, Robinson proposed the idea of a boycott more than a year before it was implemented after Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Robinson, who was an English professor at Alabama State College (now Alabama State University) through the 1950s, published her memoir, “The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It,” in 1987. She died Aug. 29, 1992.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

A booking photograph of Jo Ann Robinson (1912-1992) after her arrest during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Robinson was a civil rights activist and professor at Alabama State College (now Alabama State University) who became president of the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery and was a leading figure in organizing the boycott. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, Montgomery County Archives)

A trolley passes the site where civil rights icon Rosa Parks was arrested Dec. 1, 1955, for not giving up her bus seat to a white man. Her arrest for this triggered a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

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