The U.S. National Archives has some interesting Rosa Parks items - a diagram showing where she was seated on the bus when she refused to give up her seat to a white rider and the 1955 City of Montgomery police report.
The diagram provides some interesting insight into the spatial segregation of bus spaces. In a 1966 study, researchers looked at the seating patterns of black and whites on buses in New Orleans, where public transit had been desegregated since 1958. They used a variety of approaches to measuring "precedence violators," those individuals who violated traditional black-white social expectations about where people should sit. While they acknowledge the challenges in doing a segregation-integration study and the many factors that can influence seating in the confines of a bus, their measures show that generally buses remained racially segregated spaces.
(thx Nick K!) (via U.S. National Archives)
Showing posts with label transportation equity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transportation equity. Show all posts
Documentary on race and transit
Transportation Nation and American Public Media collaborated on a radio documentary put out last year called Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race, and Inequality. It's a collection of different pieces about a variety of topics, including the devastation of the African American neighborhood of Rondo in St. Paul after the interstate highway system came through, the Oakland Airport Connector and the politics of transit financing, race and public transit disparities in Atlanta, and the relationship between transit and housing values in Washington, DC and Denver.
It's well-produced and worth a listen.
(via Transportation Nation, American Public Media)
It's well-produced and worth a listen.
(via Transportation Nation, American Public Media)
