Middle Georgia native remembered for civil rights role

Sixty years ago this week, Rosa Parks played an integral role in the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, but a Middle Georgia native was perhaps just as vital to the cause.

On Dec. 1, 1955, Parks famously refused to move from the front of a Montgomery city bus and was subsequently arrested. In the days that followed, Jo Ann Robinson and some of her students at Alabama State College printed as many as 50,000 leaflets on a mimeograph machine, organizing the boycott.

"You might say that she's the unsung hero," said former Macon Mayor Jack Ellis.

Ellis will be participating in this weekend's festivities commemorating the boycott in Montgomery. He said Parks was chosen by civil rights leaders for her role on the bus, but that wasn't the case with Robinson.

"Jo Ann Robinson did it spontaneously based on her gut, what she knew was right," Ellis said.

That included offering carpools to black workers who were concerned about getting to their jobs, which was key to the boycott taking hold. Jeffrey Bruce, director of exhibitions at the Tubman Museum in Macon, talked about the "fortitude" required to participate in the civil rights movement, particularly in its early stages.

"It's hard to talk about that movement without talking about the people involved in heroic terms," Bruce said. "I don't think I measure up."

Robinson was born in Culloden on April 17, 1912, but her family moved to Macon, where she attended Ballard-Hudson High School. She graduated from Fort Valley State College in 1934 and returned to Macon to teach at Ballard-Hudson before getting her master's degree from what is now Clark Atlanta University and heading off to Alabama State.

Despite Robinson's deep ties to Middle Georgia, Ellis said he didn't know about her role in the Montgomery bus boycott until after he became mayor in 1999.

He said it's necessary to remember that role because, without her efforts to make sure the boycott was successful, the larger movement might not have been as effective. Martin Luther King Jr. also rose to prominence as a civil rights leader through his work in Montgomery after the boycott.

"It's so important because that was the impetus of the modern civil rights movement," Ellis said.

Robinson later moved to Louisiana and then Los Angeles, where she died in 1992.

Ellis is asking the Macon-Bibb County Commission to honor Robinson in Rosa Parks Square at the corner of Poplar and First streets. Naming the park after Parks was among the easiest of his tenure, he said.

"That was one of the few things I got a unanimous vote on during my time as mayor," Ellis said with a laugh.

To contact writer Jeremy Timmerman, call 744-4331 or find him on Twitter@MTJTimm.

This story was originally published December 1, 2015 at 5:58 PM with the headline "Middle Georgia native remembered for civil rights role ."