1 December 2011
Thursday's Poem: "The Bull Moose" by Alden Nowlan, from What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread. Thursday's Literary Notes: On this date in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. The Montgomery bus segregation policy at that time dictated that the black and white sections were fluid based on need; whites were guaranteed at least the first four rows, but the boundary between the sections was wherever the dividing sign was at any given moment. If the bus was crowded with a lot of white passengers, the black section was pushed farther back toward the back of the bus. Sometimes the driver would eliminate the black section altogether; whenever this happened, the black passengers were forced to leave the bus and wait for another. Also, if there were white passengers in the front of the bus, black passengers weren't allowed to walk past them to take their seats; they could board the front of the bus to pay their fare, but then had to get off and board by the back entrance, and it wasn't uncommon for the bus to pull away before they had a chance to do so...
Dec. 01, 2011: The Writer's Almanac • Opuss № I