More than a century before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, Shadrach Howard, David Ruggles, Frederick Douglass, and others had rejected demands that they relinquish their seats on various New England railroads. They were protesting segregation on Jim Crow cars, a term that originated in New England in 1839. Theirs was part of a larger movement for equal rights in antebellum New England. Using sit-ins, boycotts, petition drives, and other initiatives, African-American New Englanders and their white allies attempted to desegregate schools, transportation,...