Although not often highlighted in American history, before Rosa Parks changed America when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in December 1955, 19th-century African-American civil rights activists worked strenuously from the 1850s until the 1880s for the cause of equal treatment in public transportation.
This sequence of events was overshadowed by Rosa Parks', but prior to her act of resistance on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in December 1955, African-American civil rights activists from the 1850s to the 1880s worked tirelessly to secure equal access to public transportation.