Encyclopedia

This interactive encyclopedia offers teachers and students access to terms, people, and events related to the history of Jim Crow. Many entries include reference material and some of the biographies on prominent figures contain suggestions for teaching as well as links to related sections of this site. The encyclopedia will continue to grow throughout the course of this project.

Danner, Margaret Esse: (1915-1984) When only a child in the eighth grade, Margaret Danner wrote her first prize-winning poem, The Violin. Although it would be many years before her first book of poetry saw publication, the image of the violin reappeared many times in later works. Born in Kentucky, Danner and her parents moved to Chicago when she was quite young. She attended Loyola and Northwestern Universities and began her association with prominent writers partly through her affiliation with the avant-garde magazine Poetry: The Magazine of Verse where she rose to be assistant editor. In 1945, she gained national recognition by winning second prize in the Poetry Workshop of the Midwestern Writers Conference. In the early 1960s she moved to Detroit to become poet-in-residence at Wayne State University. While there she established Boone House as an arts center for children. In collaboration with poet Dudley Randall, Danner published Poem Counterpoem in 1966, a volume of black-themed poetry. That same year she traveled to Africa to read her poetry and found inspiration for future poems grounded in an African aesthetic and thought by critics to be her best work. Back in America she continued to edit poetry anthologies and produced two more volumes of poetry before she died in Chicago in 1986.

Darrow, Clarence: (1857-1938) Born in Kinsman, Ohio, Darrow received an education at Allegheny College and the University of Michigan Law School, before joining the Ohio bar in 1878. His skills as a labor and criminal lawyer and his passion for social justice and reform found him acting as a defense attorney in nearly 2000 court cases. In 1890 he defended labor leader Eugene V. Debs for his role in the Pullman railroad car strike, the first of many cases on behalf of political radicals and progressives. His early success in labor law was tarnished, however, in 1911 when he convinced two labor leaders to plead guilty to the bombing of the antiunion newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. In 1924, Darrow achieved national acclaim for his defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, two Chicago teenagers who had kidnapped and murdered a young boy for fun. His introduction of psychiatric evidence and theory resulted in a life sentence for the boys instead of a death penalty. His most famous case occurred in 1925 when he unsuccessfully defended John T. Scopes, a Tennessee teacher accused of teaching evolution rather than "creationism" to his students in violation of state law. His brilliant cross-examination of prosecution lawyer (the two-time Democratic presidential party candidate) William Jennings Bryan's literal interpretation of the Bible won him international attention. Darrow continued to gain worldwide respect when he successfully defended in 1926 a black family that had killed a white member of a mob trying to expel them from a white area in Detroit. He also worked in the 1930s on the Scottsboro Case, where eight young black men were falsely charged with the rape of two white women on a train. He died on March 13, 1938.

Davidson, Olivia America: (1854-1889) When she was only sixteen years old, Olivia Davidson had already embarked upon her career as an educator. The daughter of a former slave, she grew up in Ohio where her family had moved to escape the mounting pressures on freed blacks following the passage of the fugitive slave law. After she completed her schooling in Columbus she began teaching in Ohio but moved to Memphis in 1874 to teach sixth grade when her sister, Margaret, also a teacher, went to teach the freed men. While on a school break visiting Ohio in 1878, a yellow fever epidemic broke out in Memphis and Davidson was advised not to return. Instead she attended the Hampton Institute in Virginia to further her studies and met her future husband, Booker T. Washington. In 1879, she entered the Massachusetts State Normal School at Framingham. Immediately after her graduation in 1881, she joined Booker T. Washington, at his request, to help him in building the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. She quickly became indispensable to him, working as an equal partner in developing curriculum, raising money, teaching, and administrating the school. After his first wife, Fanny Smith died in 1884, Booker T. Washington married Olivia Davidson in August, 1886. Olivia Davidson Washington continued her efforts on behalf of the fledgling school but died in 1889 of tuberculosis of the larynx, three months after giving birth to her second child. On her tombstone her husband had carved the words, "She lived to the truth."

Davis, Jefferson: (1808-1889) Davis, who served as President of the Confederate States of America, was a decorated veteran of the Mexican-American War, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, the Secretary of War, and a cotton aristocrat and slave owner from Mississippi. Davis was born in Kentucky, ironically just a few miles from the birthplace of his Civil War adversary, Abraham Lincoln. He graduated from West Point in 1828 and married the daughter of Zachary Taylor, although she died shortly thereafter. In 1845 he married Varina Howell in Natchez, Mississippi, and soon entered politics. Davis was known as an ardent supporter of slavery, states' rights, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In 1861, the Confederacy elected him the first and only President of the Confederacy. His position of balancing a war effort, which required centralization, and states' rights, which required decentralization, proved untenable despite his best efforts. After the defeat of the Confederacy, Davis was allowed to live out his live as an honored hero of the white South, traveling and giving speeches. He died in New Orleans and is buried in Richmond, Virginia.

Davis, Joseph: (1784-1870) Joseph Davis was the elder brother of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He was born near Augusta, Georgia and died in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He made his wealth as a planter and as a lawyer in both Natchez and Vicksburg. During the Civil War he was driven from his plantation home in Mississippi and his lands were given to his former slaves by the Union Army. At the end of the Civil War, Davis engaged in a lengthy struggle with the Freedmen's Bureau and the federal government. He eventually regained possession of his 'Hurricane' plantation estates, throwing off the emancipated people who had toiled the soil in freedom for many years as owners of the land.

Dawes Act of 1887: Congress passed the Dawes Act towards the end of the Indian Wars. The legislation was designed to break down tribal life and convert all Native Americans into farmers. Instead of tribal land ownership, each head of family (determined by census enrollment) was allowed to claim 160 acres of tribal reservation land for farming. Single persons received a smaller allotment. Those who accepted the offer would become citizens of the United States. Although the law tried to protect new landowners from real estate speculators by prohibiting them from selling their land for 25 years, the Government provided little help to those who had no farming background. The poorest reservation lands were sold to tribal members, while the best land was sold to whites. Land allotment size shrank due to inheritance and sales. Because of the Dawes Act, Native Americans grew increasingly dependent upon the Government, which required they abandon traditional customs and tribal identity to receive help. Poverty and disease decimated the Native American population until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

Debt Peonage: The practice, beginning after the Civil War on the part of southern white landlords, of using the debts incurred by sharecroppers for supplies to bind them to the land and thus control their movements and greatly restrict their freedom. In many cases, state law supported the landlord's contention that any laborer who borrowed money but failed to pay it back was guilty of fraud and should work the debt worked off to avoid criminal proceedings. State laws also allowed landlords to pay the fines of convicted criminals, who subsequently worked for the landlord for the duration of their sentences. Numerous court cases were fought over the years with uncertain results. It was not until the 1940s that the Supreme Court outlawed the practice in United States v. Reynolds.

Dee, Ruby: (1923 - ) Ruby Dee (aka Ruby Ann Wallace), the daughter of a Pennsylvania Railroad waiter and porter father and schoolteacher mother, moved to New York's Harlem when still a baby. Instilled by her mother with the value of a good education, the young Ruby attended Hunter High School, one of the city's premier schools. She continued her education at Hunter College and while in school decided to become an actress. She apprenticed with the American Negro Theatre and mopped floors, sold tickets door-to-door, and painted scenery when not on stage. In 1946, Dee appeared on Broadway in Jeb and met her future husband, Ossie Davis. They married in 1948. Numerous roles in theatre and film followed including A Raisin in the Sun and Boesman and Lena. Throughout the 1960s Dee broke racial barriers by being the first black woman to play famous roles such as Kate in Taming of the Shrew and Cordelia in King Lear. But as a traveling actor, Dee was frequently housed in inferior accommodations and became aware of the paucity of opportunities for black people both in front of and behind the camera. Racial prejudice ushered Dee into what she calls "the Struggle" or working for racial equality. Toward that effort, and, occasionally under threat of losing her job, Dee has held membership in the NAACP, Congress of Racial Equality, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her name has appeared on letterhead for committees supporting the Black Panthers and Angela Davis and she has been acquainted with a number of late twentieth century notable African-American leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Dee has written several plays and musicals and has published a book of poetry, My One Good Nerve. She has received numerous awards among them an Emmy, ACE, and Drama Desk Award as well as a Presidential Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in 1995. Dee and Davis live in New Rochelle, New York.

Delaware State University: An educational institution stemming from the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1890 and an act of the 58th General Assembly of the State of Delaware to establish a school for African-American students studying agriculture and mechanics. Under its original name, State College for Colored Students, the school opened its doors on February 2, 1892, first offering a preparatory program for students not ready for college level work and, soon after, a normal school leading to teacher certification. By 1923, the school included a junior college, and eleven years later, a four-year curriculum allowed it to award its first bachelor's degrees in 1934. Although the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools granted the school provisional accreditation in 1944, it was revoked in 1949. Reorganization of the renamed Delaware State College resulted in the school again achieving full accreditation in 1957. Since 1957, the school has continued to expand to offer 19 different academic departments with enrollment exceeding 5,000 students. In 1993, Delaware State College became Delaware State University.

Desegregating the Armed Forces: [1948] A process of integrating whites and blacks in the U.S. armed forces that began at the start of the Cold War, when African-American leaders, like A. Philip Randolph and New York Congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., warned President Harry Truman that black Americans could not be counted on to fight in a Jim Crow army should war occur. When the Soviet Union imposed a blockade on West Berlin, Truman issued Executive Order #9981, which officially desegregated the armed forces. It would take years before the Order was fully implemented during the Korean War in 1951.

Dillard University: An institution of higher education founded in 1869 as Straight University, originally as a place for freedmen to receive an elementary education, by the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church. Named for Seymour Straight, a northern Congregationalist in New Orleans interested in the well being of the freedmen, the school attracted between 3,000-4,000 freedmen to its doors in its first eight years. Also, in 1869, the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church established Union Normal School, later renamed New Orleans University. From the start, the two schools complemented each other with a medical-nursing department at New Orleans University and a law school at Straight. The two schools merged to form Dillard University (named for educator James Hardy Dillard) in June 1930 and began instruction under the umbrella school in 1935. The university currently enrolls over 2,000 students.

Disfranchisement: The move by militant southern Democrats in 1890 to systematically and legally end black voting. To circumvent the 15th Amendment--which explicitly forbids the denial of votes on "account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude"--white racists rewrote state constitutions by adopting complex voting requirements that--without mentioning race--disfranchised black voters. Mississippi set the pace in 1890 with a set of disfranchisement measures that required proof of residency and payment of a poll tax, no criminal convictions, and literacy tests, which whites were allowed to pass if they understood the State Constitution when read to them. Louisiana introduced the grandfather clause in 1898, which stated that only men who had been eligible to vote before 1867, or whose father or grandfather had been eligible to vote prior to that year, were qualified to vote. This obviously excluded virtually all black males. Some states also passed the so-called "white primary," which limited voting in the Democratic Party primaries to whites. These measures taken together eliminated the black vote from southern politics. For teacher-reviewed external web sites on disfranchisement, click here.

Double V Campaign: (1941-1945) The idea that World War II (WWII) offered the opportunity for a double victory over fascism abroad and over racism at home. African-American civil rights groups and newspapers pressed hard for President Franklin Roosevelt to end discrimination in the defense industries. The efforts achieved the appointment of Benjamin O. Davis to the rank of Brigadier General in the Army but little else until A. Philip Randolph, president of the Sleeping Car Porters Union, threatened to bring tens of thousands of African Americans to Washington, D. C., in a massive protest march. Roosevelt finally capitulated when the numbers of potential marchers reached over 100,000 by issuing Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1942, which ordered all government agencies to end discrimination in the defense industries. The Order was to be enforced by the Fair Employment Practices Committee. Randolph's threatened march on Washington provided the model for similar techniques of direct action by civil rights leaders in the 1950 and 1960s.

Douglass, Frederick: (1817-1895) African American who escaped slavery and became the nation's leading black abolitionist before the Civil War and its greatest advocate of civil rights, especially regarding the ballot for African-American males, during Reconstruction and the early Jim Crow era. He founded and edited the abolitionist newspaper, The North Star. His book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the story of his escape from slavery and emergence as an abolitionist, is an American classic. He moved to Washington, D. C., in 1872, and thereafter held a number of government posts, including Consul General to the Republic of Haiti and Charge d'Affaires in the Dominican Republic.

Du Bois, Shirley Graham: (1896-1977) Called enigmatic, controversial, gifted, crusader, and writer, Lola Shirley Graham Du Bois' full life stretched from the height of Jim Crow segregation to the administration of President Jimmy Carter. The daughter of a highly educated itinerate minister, Graham Du Bois was encouraged to speak out against injustice at an early age. Denied access to the YWCA swimming pool because of her race, the young Graham Du Bois penned her first editorial to the local newspaper at age 13. She married at 21, gave birth to two sons, but soon thereafter divorced her husband. Leaving her children with her parents, Graham Du Bois embarked on an education that took her to the Sorbonne in Paris, Howard University, Morgan State University, and Oberlin College where she finished her bachelors and earned a master's degree in music history and fine arts. Focusing her considerable writing and musical talents on raising public appreciation of Negro music, Graham Du Bois authored Tom-Tom in 1932, a musical play dramatizing African-American history and one of the first of its kind written by an African-American woman. As Director of the Negro United part of the Federal Theatre Project in Chicago, she continued to write plays but commercial success eluded her. In 1942, Graham Du Bois became national field secretary for the NAACP and began writing biographies of luminous African-American figures such as Booker T. Washington and Phillis Wheatley for younger readers. At age 54, she became the second wife of her NAACP mentor, 83 year-old W.E.B. Du Bois, the brilliant and influential black leader. The following year he was indicted by the U.S. government for "not having registered as agents of a foreign principal" because of his involvement with the Peace Information Center, a leftist organization the U.S. government accused of promoting Soviet propaganda. In 1961 the couple renounced their U.S. citizenship and became nationals in pro-Communist Ghana, where they had been ardent supporters of President Kwame Nkrumah's revolutionary government. W.E.B. Du Bois died there two years later, but Graham Du Bois remained to create and manage the government television network. After a military coup there in 1967, she moved to Cairo, Egypt. Denied permanent re-entry to the U.S. because of her affiliation with known subversive groups, Graham Du Bois was permitted to return temporarily in 1976. In 1977 she traveled to Beijing, Chin, seeking treatment for breast cancer and died there on March 27. She and her husband are interred in Ghana.

Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt: (1868-1963) "I have been uplifted by the thought that what I have done will live long and justify my life."

Social activist and intellectual, he was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. Almost 100 years old when he died in Ghana, Africa, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois left a legacy rich not only in the area of civil rights but also in history and sociology. He was born and raised in the predominately white community of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he lived alone with his mother after his father deserted. His social activism began early--at age 16, he wrote for the New York Globe, an African-American weekly, in which the seed of his philosophy in later life can be found, for he identified the need for people of color to act as a group if progress toward equality were to be made. Graduating first in his class and holding the distinction of being the first African American to graduate from this high school, Du Bois left his sheltered childhood to attend Fisk University in Nashville on a scholarship provided by a prominent group of Great Barrington men. This is the first time he experienced a predominately African-American community and entered the world of Jim Crow. After graduating from Fisk, he realized his dream of a Harvard education; unfortunately, the University made him repeat two years of undergraduate studies before he could embark on graduate studies. Undaunted, Du Bois received another B.A., with honors, in 1890, a master's in 1892, and a doctorate in 1895. During this time, he produced two important works, "The Enforcement of the Slave Trade," his published thesis, and "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America: 1638-1870," his doctoral dissertation. While at Harvard, he involved himself with the black community by writing for the newspaper, Black Courant, a newspaper, and by giving speeches that promoted the intellectual and cultural endeavors by members of his race.

He began his teaching career as a professor at Wilberforce University in Ohio; moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he published The Philadelphia Negro (1899), a landmark work in urban sociology; then taught history and economics at Atlanta University. In 1900, he founded the Pan-African Association, an international organization that promoted solidarity among people of African-American descent. In his lifetime, he wrote more than 20 works, including five novels. Some of the most notable and enduring works are The Souls of Black Folk (1903), John Brown (1909), and Black Reconstruction (1935). In addition, he wrote two autobiographies; a collection of essays on race, history, and sociology; and contributed regularly as both editor and writer to various journals.

Unlike Booker T. Washington, whom he called an accommodator because of his stance on separate but equal and his emphasis on vocational education, Du Bois believed black Americans should have the same opportunities as whites for academic excellence in all fields, and that discrimination should be ended. As a result, whites viewed him as a radical, especially after he helped found the Niagara Movement (1905), a group that demanded civil rights and equality. In 1910, when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed, Du Bois was the only non-white elected officer. As director of publicity and research for the NAACP, he founded a monthly journal, The Crisis, which he edited for 24 years. After Washington's death, he became the most influential spokesperson for African Americans.

Resigning from The Crisis in 1934, he returned to teaching at Atlanta University. His national influence began to wane due to his perceived radical views. In 1943, Atlanta University forced him into retirement at age 76. Yet, Du Bois was not ready to retire entirely; instead, he accepted a position with the NAACP. In the next few years, he acted as consultant to the U.S. delegation at the founding of the United Nations. Fired from his position as the NAACP's special research director, he once again was unemployed--this time at the age of 80. Never one to be idle, he became associated with the Council on African Affairs, an African nationalist group. In 1950, he became Chairman of the International Peace Movement and was asked to run for the U.S. Senate on the Labor Party ticket, which he did and lost. His affiliation with the Peace Movement group played a role in his indictment as an agent of a foreign government. Fearing that they, too, would be labeled as communists, many of his friends withdrew from him, lecture bookings dried up, and he had difficulty publishing his works. In 1963, to protest the anti-Communist hysteria that existed in America, affecting him and many others, Du Bois joined the communist party and left the U.S. to live in Ghana. When the United States refused to renew his passport, Du Bois renounced his American citizenship. The words he spoke at age 90 took on a new meaning: "I would have been hailed with approval if I had died at 50. At 75, my death was practically requested," and when he died at 95, Du Bois' native land shunned him by not sending a delegate to the state funeral provided by Ghana. W.E.B. Du Bois, scientist, scholar, and activist for human rights, has come home in the sense that the man and his contributions are now applauded in America.

This Encyclopedia Biography was submitted by Claudia M. Stolz, a professor at Indiana University East in Richmond, Indiana.
W.E.B. Du Bois Lesson Activity Suggestions. For teacher-reviewed external web sites on Du Bois, click here.

Dunbar, Paul Laurence: (1872-1906) A poet and composer, raised in Dayton, Ohio. Dunbar was working as an elevator operator when his first collection of poems, Oak and Ivy, was published in 1892. He followed this set of poems with many others, including Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), and numerous short stories and individual poems. African-American schoolchildren typically memorized his poems and recited them in public programs. He wrote his poetry in black dialect speech, often depicting African-American life or tributes to African-American leaders like Frederick Douglass. He also wrote popular songs and composed for the musical theater. His "We Wear the Mask," became one of the most important protest poems in African-American literature. It talks about the dual character of black life in America, in which blacks exhibited a congenial outer behavior as expected by whites while their true thoughts and feelings lay hidden from view.

Dunbar-Nelson, Alice: (1875-1935) Born into a mixed-raced, middle-class family, Alice Ruth Moore (later Alice Dunbar-Nelson) suffered a dual persecution throughout most of her life. As a light-skinned black woman, she was ostracized for trying to "pass" for white. As a black woman, she was subjected to the exclusionary segregation laws of the period. At age twenty in 1895, Dunbar-Nelson became the first African-American woman to publish a collection of short stories with the release of Violets and Other Tales written in "dialect," a popular style of the time. Notably aracial and Creole, Dunbar-Nelson's early stories set her apart from other African-American writers of the period who focused chiefly on old Negro stereotypes. As her writing evolved over her lifetime, however, Dunbar-Nelson increasingly championed both her race and gender. In addition to being a writer, essayist, and poet, Dunbar-Nelson taught high school and college. She moved to New York in 1897 and a year later married poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Although they separated in 1902, she retained his name. She later married journalist Robert J. Nelson with whom she lived for the rest of her life. During the early twentieth century, Dunbar-Nelson was an active participant in the woman suffrage movement, the Women's Club movement, and was a founder of the Industrial School for Colored Girls in Delaware. In 1922 she led the public fight for passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which was defeated when the "solid South" successfully blocked its passage in the Senate. She continued to publish in numerous magazines such as The Journal of Negro History, The Crisis, Opportunity, and became a regular columnist with the Pittsburgh Courier and the Washington Eagle from 1926 to 1930. During this period Dunbar-Nelson spoke extensively as Executive Secretary of the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee. She died in Philadelphia in 1935.

Dunham, Katherine: (1910 - ) Through a reconciliation of her interests in ballet and science, Katherine Dunham created a new dance form which rippled throughout the American theatre and dance scene in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s and became the forerunner for later black dance companies such as Alvin Alley and Arthur Mitchell. Born into a mixed-race family outside of Chicago, Dunham's happy childhood was disrupted by the death of her mother when she was four years old. Sent to live with an aunt who loved dance and performance art, Dunham began dance instruction at an early age. Her dream of building a Negro Ballet in the early 1930s failed, partly due to her inability to find space in a building that would rent to blacks. She attended the University of Chicago to study anthropology and embarked on a study of Caribbean ethnic dance, traveling to Haiti under a Rosenwald fellowship in 1935. Combining ballet, modern, and Afro-Caribbean dance, Dunham initiated a dance amalgam called the Dunham Technique that won her local attention when she performed on the same stage with Duke Ellington in 1939. That same year she was invited to New York, debuting off-Broadway in 1940 with Le Jazz Hot. The next year the Broadway musical Cabin in the Sky established Dunham as a dance innovator of national reputation. Numerous other movie and theatre credits followed, including Stormy Weather and the movie production of Cabin in the Sky. Dunham's dance school became the nucleus for black dancers during the 1940s, and her company, the Dunham Dance Company, toured world-wide, the first black dance company to do so. In 1963, Dunham choreographed her last show, the New York Metropolitan Company's Aida. Invited by Southern Illinois University to be artist-in-residence, Dunham took up the post in 1964. After the position became permanent, Dunham opened the Performing Arts Training Center in impoverished East St. Louis for city youth as an alternative to a violent-prone life. Dunham retired from Southern Illinois in 1981. In 1983, she received a Kennedy Center Award. Dunham has choreographed over 150 ballets, plays, films and concert works and has published five books, including the autobiographical A Touch of Innocence. She continues to live in East St. Louis, Illinois.

Durr, Virginia Foster: (1903-1999) Born into a world of white Southern prosperity and opportunity, Virginia Durr spent most of her adult life battling social injustices on behalf of African Americans. As a child and young adult, Durr never questioned the legitimacy of black stereotypes and vehemently objected to being assigned a seat next to a black student in the Wellesley College dining hall where she was a student. Consequently, Durr was given the option of accepting her seat or leaving school. It was only because of financial problems that Durr left college and returned to Birmingham where she met her husband, activist lawyer Clifford Durr. A few years later the couple moved to Washington, D.C. where they became ardent supporters of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Durr joined the Women's National Democratic Club and launched into political activism. She became involved in the movement to abolish the poll tax mostly because it prevented women and poor whites from voting, but the experience significantly altered her views on race discrimination as well. In 1938, she attended the first meeting of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare in Birmingham as a representative of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee. An integrated meeting addressing problems of segregation and voter registration, the conference flaunted the city's segregation laws when delegate Eleanor Roosevelt placed her chair squarely between the white and black sections. By the 1950s, the Durrs had left Washington to live in Montgomery, Alabama, where they joined the NAACP and became actively involved in the nascent civil rights movement. When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955, Durr posted her bond and subsequently helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott. She continued to be an active civil rights advocate throughout the rest of her long life. Durr died in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in February of 1999.