First Desegregated Bus Ride; from the portfolio I Am A Man

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First Desegregated Bus Ride; from the portfolio I Am A Man

Artist Ernest C. Withers (American, 1922 - 2007)

Publisher Panopticon Press, Tony Decaneas, Waltham, MA

Datephotographs: 1956-1968; portfolio: 1994

Dimensionssheet: 16 x 19 7/8 in. (40.6 x 50.5 cm)
image: 14 15/16 x 18 1/16 in. (37.9 x 45.9 cm)
Sheet, according to WAC form: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)

MediumGelatin silver print

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LineMrs. George W. Stevens Fund

Object number

2003.46B

Not on View

DescriptionPortfolio with letterpress text and ten gelatin silver prints.

Label Text“We had won self-respect…. We felt that we were somebody, that somebody had to listen to us, that we had forced the white man to give what we knew was part of our citizenship…. [I]t is a hilarious feeling that just goes all over you, that makes you feel that America is a great country and we’re trying to do more to make it greater.” --Jo Ann Robinson, one of the organizers of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, on the 1956 Supreme Court decision desegregating buses On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress and NAACP worker in Alabama, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. The arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which brought national prominence to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A year later the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling outlawing segregation on buses.Published Referencescf.: Pictures Tell a Story (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2000) cf.: Let Us March On! Selected Civil Rights photographs of Ernest C. Withers, 1955-1968 (Boston: Massachusetts College of Art, 1992)Exhibition History

Toledo Museum of Art, People Get Ready: 50 Years of Civil Rights, June 27-September 21, 2014.