Rosa Parks Redux: Racial Mobility Projects on the Journey to Work

Abstract

The iconic image of Rosa Parks sitting at the front of a bus documents the most famous commute in history. Rosa Parks was traveling home from work when she refused to give her seat to a white passenger in 1955, an act of civil disobedience that set the Montgomery bus boycott in motion and propelled civil rights onto the national stage. Sixty years later, cities in the putatively postracial era continue to generate profound racial inequalities. Drawing on Rosa Parks's defiant commute as a framing device, I situate the journey to work as a racial mobility project that extends from historic urban processes of racial discrimination, reveals lived experiences of intersectional inequality, and generates future racial disparities. I define commuting as a racial mobility project that organizes, redistributes, and mobilizes resources along racial lines in conjunction with the movement of bodies across space. This framework links the discourses of race and mobility, both of which highlight the dynamics of politics and power. By positioning the journey to work as a racial mobility project, this article seeks to resituate the commute for geographers—conceptually, empirically, and politically—at the nexus of geography, mobility, and the struggle for racial justice in the city.