It was 6 PM on a cold evening in Montgomery, Alabama. It was the 1st of December in 1956, a Thursday when everyone at the bus stop was waiting to get home and unwind after a long day at work. It wasn’t any different for Rosa Parks, a dainty 42 year old African American woman, who worked at a nearby department store, Montgomery Fair, as a seamstress. She on-boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus and found a seat in one of the center rows, where both blacks and whites were allowed to sit those days. Ahead of her were the first 4 rows that were reserved for white passengers and the back of the bus, where blacks were allowed to sit, were already full. So it made sense to stay put, at the center.
With time more passengers on-boarded the bus, a lot of them having to stand because of the rush. And it so happened there was also a white man standing, waiting for a seat to free up. The bus driver, James Blake, found that inappropriate and quickly requested Rosa and the other blacks who were seated in the center section to give way for the white man. Others relented but Rosa didn’t move, arguing that she was not sitting in the white section of the bus. When the driver threatened to call the police and have her arrested, she found the courage to say, “You may do that.” Later in the evening Rosa got arrested but little did anyone know that what transpired there would later become the most important single act of defiance that changed the world.
In the decades to follow, there have been many interpretations of how Rosa Parks’s arrest led to a cascading set of events - boycotting of the city bus line by blacks, rallying by tens of thousands of people to protest against the segregation law that discriminated the blacks’ access to public transport, and most importantly taking the civil rights movement in America to a whole new level. It’s interesting to note that Rosa Parks was not the first black jailed for breaking Montgomery’s bus segregation laws. In fact violation of segregation laws in the city go back a decade, to 1946, when Geneva Johnson was arrested for arguing with the bus driver over seating. After that, there have been numerous similar incidents that took place in Montgomery and none of them resulted in boycotts or protests. So how did this particular incident alone give rise to a larger awakening?
One of the rationales to explain the impact would be the changing political climate in America. The previous year, in 1955, the US Supreme Court gave the famous Brown vs Board of Education ruling, mandating that segregation was illegal within public schools, and the mood was certainly more favourable for a spark that could contribute massively to the civil rights movement. However, there are also other factors that made Rosa Parks’s arrest an exceptional blip among the anti-segregation protests that were happening across the country. To understand this better let’s take a stroll back to our high school chemistry class.
Activation Energy
One of the concepts in chemistry that’s fundamental to understanding chemical reactions, Britannica defines activation energy as the minimum amount of energy that is required to activate atoms or molecules to a condition in which they can undergo chemical transformation or physical transport. It’s the energy that needs to be provided to the reactants so that they convert into a new set of products.
An even better definition in my opinion is what Prof. Richard Feynman gives in his book Six Easy Pieces: “If we wanted to take an object from one place to another, at the same level but on the other side of a hill, we could push it over the top, but to do so requires the addition of some energy.”
The concept of activation energy, or in simpler terms an energy barrier, is not hard to understand for most of us encounter examples of this mental model almost on a daily basis. Let’s look at some examples:
1. The amount of crying and nagging little children do to get something from their parents - they gradually learn that they need to cross a threshold to get their parents attention to act.
2. The minimum marks you need to pass an exam at school
3. The cut-off time that you need to clear to participate in a long distance race (not energy related, but a barrier nonetheless)
4. The number of flying hours you are required to clock to become a professional pilot.
Time for a small thought exercise: I’ll appreciate it if you can take 2 minutes to pause and reflect on what activation energy or barrier / threshold instances you have come across in your life.
As you would’ve noticed, all these barriers stand in the way of two realities - the before and the after. They reflect an effort that you consciously put to change something in your life, much like the energy required to take the object from one side to other side of the hill, as Prof. Feynman described it.
Back to Rosa Parks’s arrest
Let’s try to learn how Rosa Parks’s arrest can be understood to be unique compared to the other anti-segregation protests that didn’t take off during these times:
Unlike the other victims of segregation during this period, Rosa Parks was very well connected in the social circles of Montgomery. She was the secretary of the local NAACP chapter, attended the Methodist church, and volunteered her time at multiple organisations in the city. As Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning civil rights historian mentioned, “Rosa Parks transcended the social stratifications of the black community and Montgomery as a whole. She was friends with field hands and college professors.” This meant there were many people who cared about Rosa Parks getting justice in this case.
The activism got enough momentum that it crossed the usual barrier that prevented the other movements to kick off a city wide protest. Charles Duhigg refers to this incident in his book, “The Power of Habit”, trying to explain how enduring social phenomenon like the Montgomery bus boycott prevailed.
“When she (Rosa Parks) was arrested, it triggered a series of social habits - the habits of friendship - that ignited the initial protest. Parks’s membership in dozens of social networks across Montgomery allowed her friends to muster a response before the community’s normal apathy could take hold.”The movement gave rise to leaders including a young pastor Martin Luther King Jr. and former head of Montgomery NAACP E.D. Nixon and these leaders later were able to give the participants new habits that created a sense of identity and a feeling of ownership towards the cause. This, Charles argues, is a characteristic of movements that endure the test of times and break through the barrier.
What followed is history. It transformed into a movement that clearly had what it takes to mould a new reality - the activation energy to get to the other side of the hill.
I hope you enjoyed this short read on the concept of activation energy, the role it plays in our lives and how it explains the most defining moment in the civil rights movement in America.