But Kelley shows how in Birmingham, AL there were plenty of people who, on a daily basis, did ride buses, did get pissed off, and did spontaneously decide they weren't going to take it any more: people giving bus drivers a hard time if they didn't give the right change, people refusing to move to the back of the bus, people letting other passengers on the bus without paying fare. He recounts instances when these actions came to violence: bus drivers would pull guns and bludgeon people with them, and sometimes shoot them. At other times, they'd arbitrarily refuse to stop at the stops passengers called, or would just drive by a stop filled with blacks waiting for their ride. Sometimes, the driver would close the door on black passengers hands.
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This is part of the standard account, not a new discovery. There was at least one death as the result of such rebellions, and several cases had been considered by the Montgomery NAACP prior to the Park's action but the person involved was not considered 'right' for one reason or another. I mean, your point is correct, but it didn't take a special investigation to establish it.
I've always taken for granted, which is why the silliness on this list about the London riots surprised me, that riots, etc were pre-political but NOT a-political. Human activity doesn't divide up into neat little parcels in the way in which lbo-talk "criticism" of the London riots presupposed. And there is the problem of what "spontaneous" actually mans. Usually it does _not_ mean spontaneous; like probability, it refers to epistemology, not behavior: we don't know what kind of conversation in the family or in bars or in a army company in Korea or France had preceded the day when someone sat down in the front of a bus. In other words, when we don't know the prior history, we call it spontaneous. Moreover, most if not all references on this list to spontaneous action has ignored (or been ignorant of) the political history involved. Lenin did NOT disapprove of spontaneous resistance; he disapproved of the WORSHIP of spontaneity by the economists he was debating. The Montgomery NASCP could have just folded their hands and waited for that day when simultaneously 1000s of Black people were walking to work. THAT is what Lenin disapproved of.
I think it could be said: All spontaneous action is merely organized action the history of which is not known or knowable.
Carrol