“The northern promised land that wasn’t”: Rosa Parks and the Black Freedom Struggle in Detroit

In 2004, researchers asked high school students across the U.S. to name their top ten “most famous Americans in history” (excluding presidents) from “Columbus to the present day.” Sixty percent listed Rosa Parks, who was second in frequency only to Martin Luther King, Jr (1). There is perhaps no story of the civil rights movement more familiar to students than Rosa Parks’ heroic 1955 bus stand in Montgomery, Alabama and the year-long boycott that ensued. And yet, perhaps because of its fame, few histories are more mythologized. In the fable, racial injustice was rampant in the South (but not the rest of the nation). A quiet seamstress tired from a day’s work without thought refused to give up her seat on the bus,...