Nearly 50 years after a quiet, black seamstress refused to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus in Montgomery, Ala., Mary Hubbard quietly sat on a different bus, in a different place, at a far different time, scrawling slogans on sheets of poster board.
Hubbard's seat was near the back — in fact, one of the last rows — but she sat there by choice, not by restriction.
She was traveling to Detroit from East Lansing to pay her last respects to the seamstress. Hubbard had known her story long before February infused "Black History Month" into her middle school homework assignments.
As a child, the interdisciplinary studies in social science and health studies junior read about the activist and others, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, in her aunt's encyclopedia set that chronicled the lives of black leaders.
And on Wednesday, Hubbard said it was time to celebrate the woman's life.
"I couldn't sleep last night," she said. "This is history to me. The gathering itself — this is history."
Hubbard was one of nearly 20 sociology students that boarded a bus outside of Berkey Hall on Wednesday morning and traveled to Detroit for the funeral of the modern icon. Their professor, Sophia Koufopoulou, used the hour-and-a-half opportunity to offer a quick lesson to her captive audience.
"Why did you decide to come?" she asked the students.
"To pay respects and to say that racism isn't over yet," said a student near the front.
"It's important as young people to celebrate the people that paved the way for us," said another.
Koufopoulou encouraged the students to be active participants in society, in the spirit of the woman they were poised to honor.
"It's good to go to this funeral and pay our respects," Koufopoulou said. "And it's good to write papers and do projects and all of that.
"But then, what next?"
David Flynn listened to the teacher from a bench near the front of the bus. The interdisciplinary studies in social science community relations senior said he was happy to go to the funeral.
It had been less than a month since Flynn returned from three weeks of volunteer work at a shelter near the hurricane-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana border. The people he worked with — mostly black and impoverished — said "institutionalized racism" in the federal government created a slow emergency response.
"It's hard not to question that," he said.
As the bus trundled closer to Detroit's city limits, he said he expected the funeral to be joyous.
The bus came to a stop at the corner of Seven Mile and Telegraph roads in Detroit. The students filed into a line of hundreds that stretched for blocks outside Greater Grace Temple church.
And after three hours, the students were turned away. The church was full.
They turned back to the bus as an elderly man poured out "We Shall Overcome" from his saxophone.
On the drive back to East Lansing, the students, disappointed and tired, listened to the radio as leaders and friends eulogized a woman who helped spark a movement.
"Oh yeah, it was worth it. Just the atmosphere, just the celebration of her life," said Brittany Fuller, an interdisciplinary studies in social science and health studies senior. "All the types of people that were there.
"Her spirit was living through everybody."
