[Ayaan:] You know, what we’re learning about segregation in history feels strangely connected across different countries. [Maya:] Yeah. Like in the U.S., Black people weren’t even allowed to sit wherever they wanted on a bus. That’s wild. [Ayaan:] That changed with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, right? After Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in 1955? [Maya:] Exactly. People walked for a whole year instead of riding buses. And that’s how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became a major leader. Later, there were protests in Birmingham, the March on Washington, and the Selma March. [Ayaan:] And all that finally led to the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Laws that actually ended segregation on paper. [Maya:] What’s crazy is, in Bangladesh, something similar was happening earlier—in 1952, Students were killed just for demanding the right to speak Bangla as their language. [Ayaan:] The Language Movement. And that struggle grew into the Mass Movement of 1969, which later led to independence. [Maya:] Different places, same fight—just to be treated with dignity. [Ayaan:] Yeah. One group fought to sit on a bus. Another fought to speak their own words. Both were fighting segregation in their own way.
