Resistance on Public Transportation: Lecture Review

A set of vocabulary flashcards detailing the key figures, concepts, and incidents of black working-class resistance on Birmingham public transportation during World War II.

Congested Terrain

The title used to characterize public spaces, specifically Birmingham's streetcars and busses during World War II, as contested sites of black working-class opposition.

Robin D.G. Kelley

The author of the book "Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class," from which the study of Birmingham transit resistance is taken.

Horace Wilkinson

An Alabama white supremacist leader who in 1942 predicted that the next war would break out on public conveyance vehicles.

Semicolonial status

The social and political position occupied by black people in the Jim Crow South, marked by visual and aural reminders of segregation and inequality.

Eugene "Bull" Connor

The Birmingham police commissioner who attributed the heightened racial conflict on public transportation to the unprecedented congestion caused by the wartime economy.

Moving theaters

A metaphor for the interior spaces of busses and streetcars, functioning both as sites of dramatic performance and sites of military-like conflict between passengers and operators.

Birmingham Electric Company (BECO)

The company that owned and operated the public transit system in Birmingham during the 1940s.

Steven Edwards

A black passenger who was shot multiple times by a bus driver and an unidentified white passenger during a 1943 dispute over a fare refund.

Color boards

Adjustable dividers used on public transportation to separate the white and "colored" sections, often the focus of physical and verbal battles over space.

Consumer entitlement

The sense of right and expectation held by working-class passengers who viewed public transportation as an extension of the marketplace where they paid for service.

Tarrant City

An industrial suburb of Birmingham serviced by the Boyles-Tarrant City line, known for having the highest number of reported brawls between black and white passengers.

Zoot suiters

Young black men belonging to a dissident subculture characterized by a specific style of dress, an improvisational language, and a rejection of subservience.

Stagolee

A folk hero archetype representing "baaad niggers" whose public displays of resistance and transgression left witnesses in awe.

Pauline Carth

A teenager arrested in October 1943 on the College Hills line after she forced her way onto a crowded bus, threw her fare at the driver, and spat on him.

Chivalry

The racial and gender politics in the South that presumably compelled white men to defend white women, though this protection was often withheld from working-class white women and black women.

Loud-talking

A discursive resistance strategy where black passengers spoke loudly about racism or white people to ensure their voices penetrated and occupied white-designated spaces.

Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC)

A left-wing youth organization that attempted a direct-action campaign on the Fairfield bus line in 1942 to protest conditions for black riders.

Mildred McAdory

An SNYC activist who was beaten and arrested by Fairfield police in 1942 after attempting to move the color boards on a bus.