African American History Month and Transportation: February 4th | Transit Equity Day

Janis Scott smiles as the Route 68 bus leaves her on the Texas Southern University campus while on her way to an exhibit at the University Museum on Feb. 2, 2012, in Houston. Scott, familiar to many Houston residents as the "bus lady," died Monday, Dec. 9, in Houston. Photo: Johnny Hanson/Houston Chronicle

The battles over transportation access were central to the Civil Rights movement.  Transit Equity Day, set by the American Public Transportation Association as February 4th, during African American/Black History Month, is one way to acknowledge this.  Also see Labor Network for Sustainability.

Trump Administration derides equity as an analytical construct.  It's great that transit agencies are taking this step to link African-American and transportation history.  It's a sad but necessary story. 

-- U.S. DOT’s Updated Equity Action Plan: Key Takeaways and Recommendations by the Transportation Equity Caucus, NRDC (2024)

Especially as the Trump Administration demonizes "diversity, equity and inclusion" matters ("US DOT New Head Announces End To Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Policies," Simple Flying).  The fact is, racism happened/happens.  It's a fundamental part of the American story too.

-- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, American Public Transportation Association

Advocates are figures of today, not merely historical figures.  While we're more familiar with Rosa Parks and Montgomery, Alabama, she wasn't the first black activist fighting transportation discrimination and she won't be the last.  Last fall, the Houston Chronicle ran an obituary on one of Houston's foremost transit advocates, "Janis Scott, Houston's 'bus lady,' arts patron and tireless advocate for public transit, dies at 73."  She was a leading member of the area transit advocacy group, LINK Houston.

An earlier interview is one of the links in a four part series on transit equity by the Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research:

Part 1: “Racism has shaped public transit, and it’s riddled with inequities” 
Part 2: “What transit agencies get wrong about equity, and how to get it right” 
Part 3: “What transit equity means to a transit-dependent rider in a car-centric city” 
Part 4: “To tackle pandemic racism, we need to take action, not just take to social media”

Hillsborough Area Regional Transit (Florida) does a nice job with wraps celebrating black transportation history.

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Some agencies are providing free transit access for the day, such as in Santa Monica.  In the DC area, that includes Montgomery County.

The Boston Globe has a localized feature, "Legacy of the Green Book travel guide in New England," on the Green Book.  Today though, transit equity isn't just an issue of race ("Transit Equity Day highlights the need for transit in rural communities," Transportation for America).

Below reprints the entry from last year.  There are some edits and expansions to the original text.

Transit Equity Day in honor of Rosa Parks.  Many transit authorities are providing free transit service on Sunday February 4th, in honor of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, spearheaded by Rosa Parks, which led to the desegregation of bus service in that city and led to changes throughout the South, through a process that sadly took many years.  

Parks' birthday is the date chosen for Transit Equity Day.

Interestingly, like a lot of history, Rosa Parks wasn't the first to do this, not even in Montgomery, Alabama ("Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin," NPR).  But when a concerted organizing campaign was developed, she was chosen to be the face.

Sometime ago, I came across some journal articles about boycotts against streetcar segregation around the turn of the century in the South, including Richmond ("Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African-American Citizenship in the Age of Plessy v. Ferguson," book review).

DC.  Despite DC being run by the federal government, mostly under the oversight of racist Southern Congressman, the city's transit system was not segregated ("Black activists' post-emancipation battle for D.C.'s city streetcars," book excerpt) as a result of post-Civil War organizing, when Congress still leaned pro-emancipation.  Hiring remained segregated ("The Fight Against Capital Transit's Jim Crow Hiring: 1941-55," Washington Area Spark).

Bus Fare Boycott, 1965/1966.  A future Mayor of DC, Marion Barry intended to get a PhD but instead  came to DC to set up a chapter on civil rights organizing for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.  One of his campaigns was a bus boycott in response to a fare increase ("Marion Barry Leads Bus Boycott," WETA/PBS).  From the article:

... Barry saw the bus company’s raised rates as a direct hit to low income people in the District, who were mostly African American. On November 8, 1965, D.C. Transit appealed to the Washington Metro Area Transit Commission to increase fares from 20 cents to 25 cents a ride. 

The hearing was held in the Interstate Commerce Commercial Building (now one of the Environmental Protection Agency buildings) at 12th St. and Constitution Ave NW. The small room in which the meeting took place must have soon felt even smaller as uninvited guests showed up; SNCC crashed the party, bringing around 100 colleagues and associates. Speakers from SNCC made it clear that if the fare increase were to occur, a boycott would follow. 

Alternative transportation during the bus boycott.

... The main focus was on the Benning Road routes, which served mostly African-Americans. Organizers arranged a transportation system for boycotters: “[R]iders will be offered free volunteer car-pool and bus service to and from their jobs under an extensive plan utilizing four major car assembly points: 45 neighborhood rider substations in stores and churches; 200 volunteer cars and drivers; 20 church donated ‘freedom busses’ and more than 250 neighborhood workers” Barry explained.

... the boycott made a strong impression. Causing a loss of about $30,000 in a single day, it served as a harsh warning to D.C. Transit about the financial impacts a longer demonstration could have on the company. Officials backed down and the fare increase did not go into effect. Barry celebrated the victory, saying that the boycott showed “the people have power.  

Greyhound bus cultural interpretation "board" on the side of the Freedom Rides Museum, Montgomery, Alabama. Photo by Michael Harding

Inter-city bus segregation.  There's a terrible story of the beating of soldier Isaac Woolard returning home from military service, on an inter-city bus in 1946 for not sitting in the back, he was blinded, beaten by a police officer.  

While President Truman was no integrationist he was appalled by how this man who served his country was treated and it led him to take on more of a civil rights agenda, including desegregation of the military ("The Blinding of Isaac Woolard," American Experience, PBS).

The history of the Civil Rights Movement is intimately linked to transportation access, segregation on transit and in transit stations, Bus Boycotts not just in Montgomery, the Freedom Riders quest to desegregate inter-city bus service, violence associated with these protests, etc. 

PBS has programs on the Freedom Riders. It'd be nice to do repeat showings during Black History Month. 

A lens on transit equity.  There is the rise in the number of communities taking an equity lens to government policies and programs, including urban and transportation planning ("Baltimore transit equity study spotlights racial disparities around neighborhoods," Washington Post, "Boston’s fare-free bus pilot program sets the stage for transit equity, advocates say," WGBH/NPR).

Although for some time, transit agencies receiving federal monies were already supposed to be doing this, and they weren't.  

That's changing.  

Former DC planner-engineer and now transit official in Houston, Victoria O. Davis, authored a book, Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities. published by Island Press, on these issues.

I've written a bunch of pieces about certain elements of this over the past decade.  For example,  "Making bus service sexy and more equitable" (2012) discusses how investment in bus systems, network breadth and depth, and streetcars is a benefit for the transit dependent.  

Low income fare discounts ("WMATA to consider lower cost/free transit pass for low income riders," 2020) and incremental pass payment systems, which more transit agencies are starting to implement now too ("13 Reasons Why Transit Agencies Around the World are Choosing Fare Payments-as-a-Service (FPaaS) Platforms for Fare Collection," Masabi).

From Ride On Zero & Reduced Fare Study (Montgomery County Maryland):

... it is not uncommon for low-income users to pay single-trip fares despite the existence of a monthly pass that may provide a more cost-effective means. This can often be the result of limited financial flexibility to afford the up-front cost of the monthly pass. Under this alternative, such users may become even more disinclined to pursue the monthly pass product.

Transportation Equity Day versus Transit Equity Day.   I'd actually honor a broader "Transportation Equity Day," if it were up to me, to address transportation issues beyond transit.  Here are some other topics vitally important to the intertwined story of transportation history and African-American history.

John Lewis (right) with fellow protesters at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., 1965. Credit: Alabama Department of Archives and History. Donated by Alabama Media Group. Photo by Tom Lankford, Birmingham News. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Protest in the public space.  It goes without saying that public protest was often held in public spaces, on streets and bridges, through public marches.  

A march on the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama ending in police violence is considered a watershed moment in the Civil Rights movement as parts of it were televised and justice minded people couldn't ignore the reality of segregation.

From "Thousands rally in downtown Los Angeles, shut down 101 Freeway to protest Trump’s immigration policies," Los Angeles Times.  Thousands of people gathered Sunday in downtown Los Angeles to demonstrate for immigration rights, blocking lanes on the 101 Freeway at times.

That transportation infrastructure is still being used in this way in today's protests, like shutting down freeways for George Floyd and anti-Trump Administration marches should not be a surprise.  Unlike today's protestors, those in Selma stayed on the sidewalk!

The expressway was built directly on top of Claiborne Avenue in the late 1960s – ripping up the oak trees and tearing apart a street sometimes called the ‘Main Street of Black New Orleans’. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

Freeway placement divides black communities. An element is how urban freeways were often built through minority neighborhoods ("America's Highway System Is a Monument to Environmental Racism and a History of Inequity," KQED/PBS, "A Brief History Of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways," NPR, "The racist history of America's interstate highway boom," LA Times, "Could the US highways that split communities on racial lines finally fall?," Guardian).  Other urban renewal initiatives didn't help.

More recently the Biden Administration developed an initiative to fund measures to rebuild connections and address manufactured disparities within disconnected communities ("Transit projects receive more than $1 billion in federal grants designed to reconnect communities," Mass Transit).

Urban design and minority communities.  Traditionally, minority communities face all types of disinvestment, in housing, community amenities, and in mobility infrastructure--streets, sidewalks ("Socioeconomic and racial disparities of sidewalk quality in a traditional rust belt city," SSM Population Health, 2021) including access to transit ("It's not just sidewalks and money, spatial form and density influence the propensity to walk," 2009).

Angie Schmitt writes about this in terms of pedestrian safety, Right of Way: Race, Class and the Silent Crisis of Pedestrian Deaths in America, also published by the great Island Press.

Transit access is more complicated even because "choice riders"--people with cars--see transit more as a social service, not a vital community service.

Another indicator is tree cover, which significantly lags ("Since When Have Trees Existed Only for Rich Americans?," New York Times).  Urban forestry is usually a responsibility for city transportation agencies.

I have thoughts on this in "What is an inclusive city?" (2013) but I can't say it's super specific.  

When I worked on issues in DC I used to say that I wanted every block to be great, and I've made advances in thinking about planning for equity

-- "An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017
-- "Equity planning: an update," 2020
-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021

In South America, a foundational element of "social urbanism," a planning approach to public investment that improves communities is in enhancing transportation in transformational ways.  For example, gondolas and escalators to better reach neighborhoods with challenging topographical issues, and bike sharing to enhance first mile/last mile access.  For example, in Bogota, transit users can end their trip on a free bike sharing ride.

David Barth's diagram on the public realm as an interconnected system is great.  But could do better on indicating how the realm is linked through mobility networks.

My more recent writings that communities need urban design and walkable community plans ("Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning") and investment in placemaking elements

-- "Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces"," 2020
-- "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," 2020
-- "Why doesn't every big city in North America have its own Las Ramblas?," 2020
-- "Diversity Plaza, Queens, a pedestrian exclusive block," 2020
;--"Bus stops as neighborhood focal points and opportunities for placemaking," ) 

are most applicable to these issues.

Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights

Individual car ownership as freedom.  For people with the means, privately owned cars were a step towards a kind of freedom from segregated transit ("How Automobiles Helped Power the Civil Rights Movement," Smithsonian, "How Cars Changed Black Life In America," KERA-FM/NPR).  

OTOH, the freedom was circumscribed as black motor vehicle operators had to wend their way through racist traffic enforcement and segregated public accommodations.

Negro Motorist Green Book and public accommodations laws and enforcement.  This book was a guide to safe places for services, gas, eating and overnight stays for African-Americans traveling on the roads in segregated places.  

Negro Travelers' Green Book, 1956. Digital collections, University of South Carolina. Complete scan.

-- "Lighting the Way | When the Way is Dark," Exhibit, Smithsonian Institution
-- "Navigating the Green Book," New York Public Library
-- "An atlas of self-reliance: The Negro Motorist's Green Book (1937-1964)," National Museum of American History).

It wasn't until the mid-1950s when significant gains began to be made in laws concerning the desegregation of public accommodations beyond transit--co-equal access to restaurants, motels, stores, etc.--which led to the Green Book no longer being as necessary. It ceased publication in the late 1960s.

I hate to admit, given all the gas station road maps I've collected over the years, that I am just now realizing that all of the images of people, gas station attendants, etc., only feature whites.

In an interview with travel historian Gretchen Sorin, Spencer Crew recalled traveling in his parents’ car in the 1950s: “that big old car was like a cocoon,” he remembered. “We didn’t know anything except what we saw out the side windows. We could hardly see over the back of the front seat. Our parents protected us from all the racist stuff along the road." Photo titled "Mr. Lifsey presenting Oldsmobile to raffle winner, April 1955." Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Traffic safety and the black community ("Racial disparities in traffic fatalities much wider than previously known," Harvard).

A new study by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has found that Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately affected by traffic-related deaths—and that these disparities in fatalities are larger than previous estimates show. 

Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on Tuesday, June 7, 2022, the study found that travel distances vary among racial/ethnic groups when walking, cycling, or driving—and when these differences in activity levels are taken into account, Black Americans had the highest traffic fatality rate per mile traveled and across all modes, followed by Hispanics, Whites, and Asians. 

An out of control vehicle crashed into a gas station on Florida Avenue NE in Washington, DC, killing a patron.  Photo: Fox5DC

These disparities were particularly stark for walking and cycling, and during evening hours. The study provides a more accurate assessment of racial/ethnic disparities in traffic deaths than previous traffic mortality studies, which have not accounted for these differences in travel distances, and thus, underestimated both the traffic-related risks and deaths that Black and Hispanic Americans experience. 

These findings may also point to structural racism within the US transportation system, the researchers say.

Disparities in enforcement.  Researchers like Gregory Shill ("Should law subsidize driving?," "Reckless Driving Isn't Just a Design Problem," Atlantic) state that social justice initiatives limiting enforcement against POC ("If Black Lives Really Matter, We Must End Traffic Stops!," William & Mary Institute of Race, Gender and Social Justice, "What Traffic Enforcement Without Police Could Look Like," The Appeal, "Traffic Without the Police," Stanford Law Review) actually hurt the same communities more, because of the deleterious impact of crashes, deaths, and reckless driving. 

There is no question though that there is structural racism embodied in traffic enforcement ("The racial composition of road users, traffic citations, and police stops," Proceedings of the National Academies of of Sciences).

School busing and desegregation is yet another issue.  I was just a bit too young to be conscious of bombing of buses in Pontiac, Michigan in 1971 ("On this day in 1971: KKK bombs empty Pontiac buses set to racially integrate schools," Michigan Advance).  

African American Boycott in favor of the desegregation of Boston Schools, February 26, 1964. (Photo James Fraser photograph collection, Northeastern University, Boston.)

I lived in Detroit at the time, but in 6th and 7th grade I did attend Pontiac Schools, after desegregation.  In Detroit, I attended schools that were segregated based on demographically homogeneous neighborhoods.

PBS has a great documentary of the battles over "busing" focusing on Boston.  

-- "The Busing Battleground: The Decades-Long Road to School Desegregation," American Experience, PBS

-- "It was a war zone: Busing in Boston," WBUR/NPR

I really need to read Common Ground, by J. Anthony Lukacs, about the battle over busing in Boston.

Transportation History interpretation and presentation.  FWIW, I think transit agencies should have a public history interpretation program, including on issues of race, that is displayed at stations, on transit vehicles, etc., 24/7/365.  

This guidebook published by the National Park Service, is useful for selecting sites that interpret this history.

-- Civil Rights in America: Racial Desegregation of Public Accommodations, African-American Theme Studies, National Park Service

US Civil Rights Trail.  Is a broad heritage trail of significant sites and events in civil rights history.  Encompassing 15 states in the Southeast, it could be worth considering creating a sub-trail that is transportation specific.

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.  The members of this union worked as attendants on the sleeper cars for overnight train service.  These cars weren't owned by the railroads, but by the Pullman Company of Chicago (Pullman Porters, NPS).  

National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, located at the corner of 104th and Maryland Ave. NPS Photo/Ve'Amber D. Miller

Many ended up being civil rights organizers indirectly protected by the travel within their job.  Many ensured that black newspapers like the Baltimore Afro-American, Chicago Defender, and the Pittsburgh Courier were distributed throughout the South.

To push civil rights forward during WWII, the Brotherhood planned a "March on Washington", which was cancelled at the behest of FDR in return for concessions.  The Brotherhood later took part in the 1963 March on Washington ("The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: The Civil Rights Movement," masters thesis).