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One of the earliest assaults on segregated transit in the South occurred in Louisville, Ky., in 1870-71. There, the city’s black community organized a successful protest that relied on nonviolent direct action, a tactic that would give shape to the modern civil rights movement nearly a century later.

Bayard Rustin believed deeply in the power of nonviolence during the era of segregation. In the following essay, he describes its use and effect on a bus ride from Louisville to Nashville.