This Seat's Taken: Separate But Equal, Rosa Parks and the Act That Started the Civil Rights Movement

By the 1950s, the law known as separate but equal had become second-nature to Southern Blacks. Having originated in the aftermath of the American Civil War, it was proposed by Southern Democrats to maintain continued oppression over the newly-emancipated African Americans. Though there was some opposition in the near-century that followed, it wasn't until 1955 that the fight against it finally gained some traction when a Montgomery, Alabama-based seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White rider on a city bus. But who was Rosa Parks? What is the history surrounding the notorious separate but equal law? And how did Parks' heroic actions launch the Civil Rights Movement? Find out in the final Black History Month installment of the "History Loves Company" podcast.