The Who We Are Project

What Did They Do? The Montgomery Bus Boycotts Black communities have faced repressive regimes before and the intentional theft of their land and labor while being denied the wealth, food, and healthcare their labor should have afforded them. In this series, we explore what different community efforts Black activists and organizations have engaged in to fight back against repression. The Montgomery Bus Boycotts were boycotts organized by the Montgomery Improvement Association, a grassroots group of Black community members who joined together to boycott Montgomery, Alabama’s segregated city bus system. The Montgomery Bus Boycotts began just four days after civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on the bus in a “whites only section” of a bus to draw attention to the racist policy. She was arrested and fined. Parks was part of a growing movement of Black people who had decided to refuse to sit in segregated seating as part of a tactic to draw attention to the issue. After she and others were arrested, Parks reached out to her contacts about the incident. Her case was chosen to highlight the injustice of the segregated bus system in the region and several groups united to protest: the NAACP, the Women’s Political Council, and The Montgomery Improvement Association. On December 3, the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, Martin Luther King, Jr., called for boycotts. On December 4, Black ministers throughout the region announced them. By that Monday, December 5, over 40,000 people participated in the boycotts. In all, the Montgomery Bus Boycotts lasted 381 days. Although 75% of bus riders in Montgomery were Black, the city refused to meet Black protesters' demands. In time, 5 Montgomery women - Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanatta Reese - sued the city over its segregation laws. While the boycotts lasted, most Black commuters walked but, for those who chose to ride to work, Black taxi drivers kept fares at just 10 cents a ride, the same rate as a bus fare. In response, Montgomery police instituted a minimum fare law and even arrested Black cab drivers who ferried Black commuters. On June 5, 1956, a federal court ruled that Montgomery’s segregated bus policy violated the 14th Amendment and the city was ordered to integrate the system. The city appealed to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the lower court on December 20, 1956. Today, as the government, universities, and many corporations attempt to appease this administration and purge Black, brown, and other marginalized people from public life, what can we learn from the Montgomery Bus Boycotts about how to withhold our spending to bring about change? Written by Diana Cherry Designed by Juliette Hemingway

“We cannot accept this. We cannot give in to it. We have to remain inquisitive and we have to remain skeptical. When we hear language that is meant to inflame, we have to question what we hear, especially when the same words and phrases are repeated over and over — especially by our leaders. Repetition is not just a pattern; it is a tactic. Language shapes perception, and when certain phrases are echoed, they can dull critical thought, reinforce ideology, or mask deeper realities. We have to be sensitive to misinformation and disinformation. We must ask: Who benefits from this message? What is being emphasized — or left unsaid? We have to search for the truth. And when we find it, we have to speak out.” —Sarah Kunstler, director, Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America

What Did She Do? Fannie Lou Hamer Black communities have faced repressive regimes before and the intentional theft of their land and labor while being denied the wealth, food, and healthcare their labor should have afforded them. In this series, we explore what different community efforts Black activists and organizations have engaged to fight back against repression. She joined SNCC. Fannie Lou Hamer worked as sharecropper with her husband, Perry Hamer, and decided to get more politically involved. She attended a civil rights meeting in 1961 and signed up to become a member of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). She immediately got involved as a SNCC organizer, enlisting 17 others to register to vote with her in Ruleville, Mississippi in Sunflower County. She and the 17 other Black voters with her were administered an unfair poll test and turned away, then harassed and fined $100 on their way home for riding in a bus that was deemed “too yellow.” She was then fired from her job and forced to move. She did not give up. She founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Continually frustrated with the lack of political representation that Black farmers like her faced, she formed her own party to counter the Mississippi Democratic Party in 1964. She traveled to the Democratic National Convention to speak, arguing for an official designation. President Lyndon B. Johnson was so concerned about the impact of her speech, he intentionally scheduled a speech of his own for the same time, attempting to take airtime away from her. Networks broadcast her speech after his anyway. She founded the “Pig Bank”. In 1968 she founded the “pig bank” a mutual aid approach to addressing economic inequality for Black farmers. She worked to secure donors to purchase pigs to provide farmers with free livestock to raise on their farms. She founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative. Another donor supported initiative, the group purchased land to award to farmers in order to allow Black farmers to be free of predatory sharecropping and establish their own farming land. In 1971, Hamer helped to found the National Women’s Political Caucus, an organization aimed at supporting women in running for office and participating in all other forms of political life. Written by Diana Cherry Designed by Juliette Hemingway Sources: https://lnkd.in/enhaEsq https://lnkd.in/g_kB4YaR

Excerpts From An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Davis (written by James Baldwin) Dear Sister: “One might have hoped that, by this hour, the very sight of chains on Black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbearable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But, no, they appear to glory in their chains; now, more than ever, they appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses.” “You look exceedingly alone—as alone, say, as the Jewish housewife in the boxcar headed for Dachau, or as any one of our ancestors, chained together in the name of Jesus, headed for a Christian land.” “Well. Since we live in an age which silence is not only criminal but suicidal, I have been making as much noise as I can…” “One way of gauging a nation's health, or of discerning what it really considers to be its interests—or to what extent it can be considered as a nation as distinguished from a coalition of special interests—is to examine those people it elects to represent or protect it. One glance at the American leaders (or figureheads) conveys that America is on the edge of absolute chaos, and also suggests the future to which American interests, if not the bulk of the American people, appear willing to consign the Blacks. (Indeed, one look at our past conveys that.) It is clear that for the bulk of our (nominal) countrymen, we are all expendable. And Messrs. Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, and Hoover, to say nothing, of course, of the Kings' Row basket case, the winning Ronnie Reagan, will not hesitate for an instant to carry out what they insist is the will of the people.” “But what, in America, is the will of the people? And who, for the above-named, are the people?...”

The Racist History of the Founding of Liberia Liberia was first established as a colony by the United States in 1846 off the Atlantic coast in northern West Africa. It was part of the efforts of a group called the American Colonization Society, whose goal was to reduce the newly freed Black population in the U.S. and “resettle” Black people in Africa. The group sought to address the growing fears among many white people, including abolitionists, in the mid and late 1800’s that free Black people were becoming too large a percentage of the population of the U.S. Plans for Liberia and similar “resettlement” efforts suggested everything from forcible deportation to voluntary relocation, but all ignored the investment Black people had made in building the United States and their right to live as citizens in a country that had prospered largely by exploiting them. Ultimately, freedman did settle in Liberia. In 1820, 88 free Black settlers and 3 society members sailed for Sierra Leone, agreeing to follow U.S. law in the new colony planned. The new colony was heavily advertised. 20,000 newly freed formerly enslaved Black people eventually made the journey. They initially settled on Sherbro Island, but about half of the total population died of malaria. By 1821, backed by the U.S. Navy, they had made an agreement with locals in Sierra Leone and purchased a small strip of land. But, the terms of the agreement were questionable and the colony continued to face attacks. By 1824, they had fortified the settlement and mostly insulated themselves from further attacks, naming the territory “Liberia” and the capitol, “Monrovia” after James Monroe, who had procured funding for the project. Many proponents of the colony hoped that freed Black people would voluntarily relocate to Liberia, but that never happened. President Lincoln considered the idea, but Congress never promoted it, fearing the U.S. would lose too large a share of needed soldiers and laborers. The United States established diplomatic relations with Liberia in 1862 and maintained strong diplomatic ties through the 1990s when the country was ravaged by civil war. Today, the “solution” of “relocating” people in the United States that have been exploited for profit continues. As fears that immigrants are “taking over” seem to be rising again. Undocumented immigrants and other vulnerable groups are being targeted by this administration for deportation and the same language is being used to refer to human beings as disposable to justify their forcible removal and “relocation.” Written by Diana Cherry Designed by Juliette Hemingway Sources: https://lnkd.in/dn3Vevj https://lnkd.in/g6nsG2wi. https://lnkd.in/guCjFUzu

“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.” — Howard Zinn

What We’re Reading: Be a Revolution by Ijeoma Oluo: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World--And How You Can, Too We can’t just choose to ignore the awful things happening in our country and in the world right now, but we can choose to focus on what we can do to make a difference. Things are not hopeless and we are never helpless. Oluo’s inspiring interviews with change makers who have found their place in the world fighting for the liberation of oppressed people in a variety of different unexpected ways will motivate you to do the same.

Congress’ Plans to Cut Medicaid Coverage Will Disproportionately Hurt Black and Brown People Approximately 8.7 million people of color would lose Medicaid coverage by 2026 under the Senate health care plan. – 2025 study by The Center for American Progress. This includes: 2.85 million Black people. 4.65 million Hispanic people. 1.2 million other Americans of color including Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, Native Hawaiians, Alaska Natives, and persons of two or more races. No one can claim that members of Congress don’t understand the impact of the Senate plan. Given that, watch closely for what they say or don’t say - and what they do or don’t do. Written by Diana Cherry and Jeffery Robinson Designed by Juliette Hemingway Source: https://lnkd.in/gmNMaZqX

“In his first days, President Trump signed an executive order eliminating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in the federal government, including for any recipients of federal funds. While a federal judge has put a hold on that order until its legality can be determined, too many institutions have chosen to quickly abandon their DEI related efforts anyhow. For example, within a week of the new administration, Harvard laid off the entire staff of their slavery remembrance program (HSRP), including the director Richard Cellini. It seemed Harvard needed little incentive to cut the program – Cellini claimed that in September of 2024 Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara N. Bleich, told the program “not to find too many descendants” of enslaved people. Now the whole program is gone.” — Jeffery Robinson To subscribe to our newsletter and read the full piece, link in bio

What is an "Illegal Boycott"? In a Truth Social post on March 11, 2025, timed after Elon Musk owned and founded company, Tesla stock dropped over 40%, Trump posted, "To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is 'putting it on the line' in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World's great automakers, and Elon's 'baby,' in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for. They tried to do it to me at the 2024 Presidential Ballot Box, but how did that work out? In any event, I'm going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American. Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN??" What is an illegal boycott? One thing is for certain: No president can tell people what they have to buy. It is not illegal for people to decide not to buy products made by companies owned by people they don’t respect. In Montgomery, Alabama people decided to boycott buses to protest segregation on public buses. The boycott lasted 381 days. Is this an illegal boycott? Written by Diana Cherry Graphic Design by Juliette Hemingway Sources: https://lnkd.in/d-x6eQe