Article 3: A Century Apart: An Evaluation of Historical Comparisons Between Elizabeth Jennings and Rosa Parks in Narratives of the Black Freedom Movement

December 1, 2015 marked the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus in 1955. This incident sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the mid-20th century civil rights movement. A century before Parks’ act of resistance, African American schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings was ejected from a streetcar in New York City due to her race. She sued the streetcar company, represented by future President Chester A. Arthur, and won in 1855. The circumstances surrounding Jennings’ forcible removal from a segregated trolley evokes the memory of Parks. In almost all instances that Elizabeth Jennings has been written about, she is referred to as a “nineteenth century Rosa Parks,” “torchbearer,” and “heroine” of civil rights a century before Parks’ arrest (Samuel 2016; Perrotta and Bohan 2013; Sassi 2007; Greider 2005; Singer 2005; Harden-Cole 2005). Although Jennings and Parks share commonalities with regard to their resistance to segregation ordinances on public transportation, there are differences between the historical contexts that influenced their lives and activism.