Teaching the Unseen Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Beyond the Bus, a special publication of the Teaching the Movement initiative, brings together key elements from several resources Learning for Justice has developed to help educators recognize and fill instructional gaps when teaching about the civil rights movement.

Take the opportunity to teach about the individuals who acted collectively alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, and about how activists organize and operate, so that students, too, can work collectively with their peers. This means that discussions about Rosa Parks must acknowledge the activists who were arrested before her and the grassroots efforts that mobilized the community to boycott after her arrest.

When we give our students the whole story, we provide a way for them to connect the past to the present and continue the march toward racial justice.