What boycotting looks like 70 years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Doris Crenshaw was 12 years old on Dec. 5, 1955, when she and her sister eagerly rushed door to door in their neighborhood, distributing flyers prepared by activists planning a boycott of city buses in Montgomery, Alabama.

“Don’t ride the bus to work, to town, to school or any place on Monday,” the flyers read, urging people to attend a mass meeting that evening.

There was a sense of urgency. Days earlier, Rosa Parks, the secretary of the local NAACP chapter, had been the latest Black person arrested for refusing to give up a bus seat to a white passenger on the segregated buses. For 381 days, an estimated 40,000 Black residents stayed off city buses — opting to walk, ride in car pools or take Black-owned cabs — until a legal challenge struck down bus-segregation laws.

“In this city there was a groundswell of a need to do something about what was going on in the buses, because a lot of people were arrested,” Crenshaw, now 82, recalled.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott marked its 70th anniversary Friday — many of the boycott organizers' descendants, including those of late civil rights icons the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy Sr., plan to reunite in the Alabama city where it all started. Widely considered the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement, the bus boycott demonstrated the power of sustained nonviolent protest and economic pressure that continues to provide a model for the activism today.

A group of national organizers encouraged people to avoid the temptation of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, aiming the action at corporations like Target and Amazon for phasing out diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and financially backing the Trump administration.

“Any time there can be a strategic and organized response to corporate behavior or exclusionary policy, communities should be free to identify the best approach to address the harm that’s being created," NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a phone interview Thursday.

“Boycotting is one tool in the toolbox. At the NAACP, we call it selective buying campaigns.”

At a Friday celebration at the Holt Street Baptist Church, the site of the mass meeting that launched the boycott, speakers connected past to present. The church now serves as a civil rights museum.

“What happened here changed the world,” the Rev. Willie D. McClung said from the pulpit. Audio of King’s Dec. 5, 1955, speech thundered through the church, and a refurbished bus from the era of the boycott was parked outside.

The Rev. Bernice A. King, King's daughter, said what transpired in Montgomery continues to be a “blueprint for any movement for freedom, justice and equality.” She said she thinks about the words of her mother, Coretta Scott King: “Struggle is a never ending process.”

“Freedom is never really won," King said Friday. “You earn it and win it in every generation. And so the freedom movement has to be intergenerational, and it’s important that the younger generation learn from those that are still left behind.”

The 70th anniversary was marked at multiple events in Montgomery paying homage to the key moment in American history and bringing calls to recommit to the fight for equality.

At a gathering on the campus of Alabama State University, the children of civil rights leaders, including King and the children of the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, met with the living foot soldiers of the movement. Donzaleigh Abernathy recalled her mother's description of the 1957 night their Montgomery home was bombed along with Black churches in Montgomery. Others recalled the joy of seeing empty buses rolling in 1955, proof that the boycott was working.

Parks' Dec. 1, 1955, arrest was the final catalyst for the boycott that had been quietly discussed by some activists in the city. The seats at the front of the city buses were reserved for white people. And Black passengers, who were forced to sit in the back, were expected to give up their seats if the white section became full.

Contrary to the story that is often told, Parks, who died in 2005, wrote that she was not particularly tired from work that day when she took a stand by keeping her seat.

“No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” Parks wrote in her autobiography.

Parks was a beloved figure in the town, Crenshaw recalled. She led the NAACP Youth Council and Crenshaw and other members would meet at the Parks' apartment each week.

Pulling off the boycott for more than a year took an extreme amount of dedication and discipline, Crenshaw recalled.

“We walked, and we kept walking,” said Crenshaw, who went on to a lifetime of civil rights activism.

The Rev. Jamal Bryant, a Georgia pastor who helped organize the Target boycott, has found some “dizzying” opposition and skepticism from Black pastors and leaders, but said it's been a learning experience to fight through and help people understand.

“Everything we are doing, we stole from y’all," Bryant told the crowd in Montgomery. "So thank you so very much for giving us the blueprint on how to get it done.”

While the specific methods have changed, the underlying goal of leveraging the economic power of the community to drive social and policy change remains the same, said Deborah Scott, the CEO of Georgia Stand-Up. The organization is focused on economic and social justice issues and emphasizes engaging and developing the next generation of activists and leaders.

Scott said she was a teenager when she arrived in Atlanta more than 30 years ago to begin organizing with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference around the anti-apartheid movement. She worked to free South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela and to establish a holiday honoring King.

Just like the original Montgomery boycott, which sought access to affordable, non-discriminatory transportation by bringing large groups of people together to drive change, the success of boycotts after it required an unshakeable sense of unity.

With widespread use of social media platforms, today’s boycotts look different. Scott said the biggest change in boycotting with the newer generation is the focus on using consumer purchasing power to pressure companies to change their policies or practices.

“We’re encouraging people to really dig deep about where they want to spend their dollars," she said.

Madison Pugh, at 13, is about the same age that Crenshaw was when she became involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The eighth grader decided with her grandmother not to shop at Target. Living in Montgomery, Pugh is growing up surrounded by the history of the civil rights movement that transpired decades before she was born. The stories from Crenshaw and others are more than just inspiring, she said.

“It's saddening to the heart to know that a whole group of people weren't allowed to go somewhere and have an education or be treated as humans because they were a different skin color," Pugh said. "It definitely lets me know that the job will never be finished and you have to keep pushing.”

Green reported from New York. Race and Ethnicity news editor Aaron Morrison in New York contributed.

Rosalyn King laughs during a "family reunion" to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Olivia Bowdoin)

Jamila Jones, sister of Doris Crenshaw and who passed out pamphlets alongside Rosa Parks, sings during a "family reunion" to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Olivia Bowdoin)

Rev. Dr. Bernice A. King, daughter of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., speaks during a "family reunion" held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Olivia Bowdoin)

Deborah Scott holds a Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative medallion awarded to her as a symbolic passing of the baton to the next generation of civil rights leaders at The Movement Center, in Atlanta, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Olivia Bowdoin)

Deborah Scott, CEO of Georgia Stand-Up, holds a portrait of civil rights activist Rosa Parks, while marking the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott at The Movement Center, in Atlanta, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Olivia Bowdoin)

FILE - Rosa Parks arrives at circuit court to be arraigned in the racial bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., Feb. 24, 1956. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - A man drives an empty bus through downtown Montgomery, Ala., April 26, 1956, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. (AP Photo/Horace Cort, File)

Deborah Scott, CEO of Georgia Stand-Up, raises her fist while standing in front of a wall honoring unsung heroes of the civil rights movement at The Movement Center, in Atlanta, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Olivia Bowdoin)

Dorris Crenshaw points to a photo of the Edmund Pettus Bridge as she prepares for the 70th anniversary of Rosa Park's Bus Boycott, Monday, Nov. 24, 2025, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)

Dorris Crenshaw poses for photos for the 70th anniversary of Rosa Park's Bus Boycott, Monday, Nov. 24, 2025, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran have damaged at least four cultural and historical sites, including palaces and an ancient mosque, raising alarms about the impact of the widening war on protected landmarks that are important to Iranian identity and world history.

The speed and extent of the damage have so concerned Iran and Lebanon that they sent a request to the United Nations' cultural agency, UNESCO, this week to add more sites to its enhanced protection list.

UNESCO confirmed that it has verified damage to the lavish Qajar-era Golestan Palace in Tehran as well as the 17th century Chehel Sotoun palace and the Masjed-e Jāme, the country's oldest Friday mosque, both in Isfahan. There also was verified damage at buildings close to the Khorramabad Valley, which includes five prehistoric caves and one rock shelter providing evidence of human occupation dating to 63,000 B.C.

At Golestan Palace, shattered glass from the mirrored ceilings blanketed the floors alongside broken archways, blown-out windows and damaged molding scattered below its glass-mosaic walls, according to Associated Press video taken March 3.

UNESCO said it provided all parties to the conflict with the geographical coordinates of the heritage sites ahead of time, “to take all feasible precautions to avoid damage.”

The impact to cultural sites has not been isolated to Iran but has been felt across the Middle East and beyond, with UNESCO tracking damage to the White City in Israel, Tyre in Lebanon and elsewhere.

Collateral damage to such places has been part of the fabric of war for decades, including in conflicts between Russia and Ukraine as well as Israel and Hamas, in which dozens of sites have been damaged or destroyed.

“What is happening is clear to all: In these increasingly modern conflicts, it’s civilians who pay the price, it’s civilian infrastructure that pays the price, and we’ve all seen the destruction of priceless historical heritage,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said this week.

Human rights advocates are echoing that sentiment, warning that the Iran war not only has killed more than 1,000 people but upended the institutions and historical places that communities rely on.

“It causes harm to civilians because it damages or destroys a piece of their history that can be significant both to the world and also to a specific region or community," said Bonnie Docherty, senior researcher in the arms division at Human Rights Watch. “It undermines the sort of shared identity of a local community, which can often be important for bringing people together.”

Arash Azizi, who grew up in Iran before moving to the U.S. as an adult, said that because his family couldn't afford to travel abroad when he was a child, they visited historical sites across the country. This, he says, is how he learned about his cultural identity and history.

“At times where school kids are killed, when human life is at stake, when the stakes are very high, people might think, ‘What are a couple of broken tiles or broken glasses?’” the 38-year-old New York resident said.

“I think this is the wrong attitude," he added. "We need a cultural context. We need to know who we are, and where we come from, and what does it all mean?”

For Shabnam Emdadi, a 35-year-old Iranian American also in New York, the damage to the Safavid-era Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan is deeply personal. She traveled there with her dad a few years before he died.

“Those Iran trips with him were my most fond memories of him at his happiest, where he felt most at home and alive, and I’ll never forget them,” Emdadi said. “Which is why every day when I see the damage of these sites that are the core of my memories, I feel like I am also losing a piece of him.”

It was unclear if it was U.S. or Israeli strikes that caused the damage. The Pentagon did not provide comment. The Israeli Defense Forces said it was “unfamiliar” with claims of damage to UNESCO sites.

One nonprofit group pointed to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying last week that America’s approach to the war would not include “stupid rules of engagement.”

“That’s an extremely important statement because it’s those rules of engagement that embody international humanitarian law, which is not just the protection of cultural heritage, but the protection of all civilian populations and structures, including your hospitals, your schools, etc.,” said Patty Gerstenblith, president of the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, an international organization dedicated to protecting heritage in conflict, disaster and crisis.

The affected sites are among the nearly 30 Iranian sites designated as under special protection as part of UNESCO's World Heritage list.

Other notable landmarks on the list include the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Statue of Liberty.

The agency's World Heritage Committee annually designates sites considered “of outstanding value to humanity” and intervenes when sites are in danger of destruction or damage. The program provides countries with technical assistance and professional training to preserve the sites.

The Trump administration announced last July that it would once again withdraw from UNESCO as it distances the U.S. from some international organizations.

The White House cited similar concerns as it did in 2018, saying it believes U.S. involvement is not in its national interest and accusing the agency of promoting anti-Israel speech. The decision won’t go into effect until December.

Associated Press writer Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

Damage caused by U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran is seen at the Qajar-era Golestan Palace in Tehran, Iran, March 3, 2026. (ISNA via AP)

Damage caused by U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran is seen at the Qajar-era Golestan Palace in Tehran, Iran, March 3, 2026. (ISNA via AP)

Damage caused by U.S. and Israeli strikes is seen on the facade of the Qajar-era Golestan Palace in Tehran, Iran, March 3, 2026. (ISNA via AP)