February 07, 2006

#11 - 1956 & Civil Rights

The recent passings of Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King remind me that the mid-1950s were more than Elvis, Chevrolet and Airstream. While Wally Byam and the boys at Airstream were designing my Caravanner in 1955, something much more significant was happening in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Parks was kicking the civil rights movement into high gear with a bus boycott that, in 1956, would lead to a Supreme Court decision striking down segregation on public buses. Of course 1956 was also the year the state of Alabama outlawed the NAACP and Martin Luther King, Jr's house was bombed. The work had just begun...