Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (April 17, 1912 – August 29, 1992) was an activist during the Civil Rights Movement and educator in Montgomery, Alabama.

[4]: 9  It was in Montgomery, Alabama, where Robinson joined the Women's Political Council, which Mary Fair Burks had founded three years earlier.

Out of fear that the incident would escalate and that the driver would go from verbal abuse to physical, Robinson chose to leave the bus.

However, when Robinson approached fellow WPC members with her story and proposal, she was told that it was "a fact of life in Montgomery."

In late 1950, she succeeded Burks as president of the WPC and helped focus the group's efforts on buses, becoming an outspoken critic of the treatment of African Americans on public transportation.

They achieved some concessions, including an undertaking that drivers would be courteous, and having buses stop at every corner in Black neighborhoods as they did in white areas.

[6] On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move from her seat in the black area of the bus she was traveling on to make way for a white passenger who was standing.

That night, with Parks' permission, Robinson stayed up mimeographing 35,000 handbills calling for a boycott of the Montgomery bus system, with the help of the chairman of the Alabama State College business department, John Cannon, and two students.

The violence was so bad that the governor of Alabama ordered the state police to guard the houses of the boycott leaders.

On December 20, 1956, the boycotts finally ended after the federal district court deemed segregated seating was unconstitutional.

In her memoir, Robinson wrote, "An oppressed but brave people, whose pride and dignity rose to the occasion, conquered fear, and faced whatever perils had to be confronted.

Robinson's memoir, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, edited by David J. Garrow, was published in 1987 by the University of Tennessee Press.

On September 17, 2021, the Alabama State University board of trustees voted unanimously to name a residence hall after Robinson.

[9] Abernathy Ralph David (1989), And The Walls Came Tumbling Down, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York page 138 ISBN 0-06-016192-2