Before the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Freedom Rides, Black women passengers founded bus protest and made the right to a bus seat a symbol of the right to American democracy. Traveling back to the beginning of the bus industry in the 1920s, Policing Passengers tells the hidden history of this first generation of riders in the Jim Crow North and the Jim Crow South. In response to the perceived threat of Black women’s mobility, white bus executives recruited drivers from law enforcement and implemented surveillance policies to violently police these riders. But Black women passengers resisted the bus industry’s policing. They narrated their experiences to the Black press, wrote blistering letters to bus companies, notarized affidavits, and pressed the government to investigate. During the Great Migration and World War II, at least forty-three Black women passengers sued for segregation and bodily injury. Their lawsuits culminated in the 1946 Supreme Court decision that enforcing segregation on interstate buses was unconstitutional, Morgan v. Virginia. Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy’s innovative and meticulously researched book reveals that Black women passengers' activism transformed the bus industry and drafted the blueprints for the postwar Black freedom struggle.
Format: Hardback
CONTRIBUTORS: Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy
EAN: 9781469698304
COUNTRY: United States
PAGES: 288
WEIGHT:
HEIGHT: 235 mm
PUBLISHED BY: The University of North Carolina Press
DATE PUBLISHED: 2026-11-17
CITY:
GENRE: HISTORY / United States / General, HISTORY / United States / 20th Century, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / African American & Black Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Violence in Society
WIDTH: 25 mm
SPINE:
Book Themes:
United States of America, USA, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Relating to African American / Black American people, Violence and abuse in society, Gender studies: women and girls, Ethnic studies, History of the Americas
Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy is professor of history at Eastern Michigan University.