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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRosa Parks is the name you know. Claudette Colvin is a name you probably should.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/01/rosa-parks-the-name-you-know-claudette-colvin-the-one-too-many-dont/That teenager, Claudette Colvin, became the first of several women arrested for refusing to abide by the state's segregation laws and social codes of racial deference. Nine months later, Rosa Parks did the same. But today, mention the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, the work of integrating public facilities, to anyone regardless of their politics and two names are likely to come up. Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King Jr. That is all.
...
Parks was not simply a woman who showed up on the bus one day while going about her daily business, refused to move, got arrested and immediately changed America. She was a committed activist and civil-rights warrior who over the course of her lifetime had grown used to fighting (sometimes physically). In the months leading to the moment Parks was arrested and taken off that Montgomery bus, she had processed letters written by people around the country lauding Colvin for her actions. She had participated in strategy sessions and discussions about challenging segregation laws and social codes. Parks, a married woman, part of a highly respected (in black Birmingham) crowd, was at least aware of discussions about why Colvin was not the "right" protester around which to build the movement that became the bus boycotts. And, she was something else.
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Colvin was dark-skinned, part of a poor black family, and by the following year, a teen mother to the child of a much older and married man. Historians have found that people involved in the movement regarded her as too emotional, too "mouthy," all around too imperfect to put at the center of the cause. But, she was also one of the plaintiffs in the case that ultimately forced Alabama to change its law. She should be no one's footnote in history.
Avid fans of the Comedy Central show Drunk History (like me) learned about Ms. Colvin last year in quite possibly one of the funniest segments to appear on the show!
marym625
(17,997 posts)But it was still one of my favorite episodes. Love that show!
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Oh that segment had me literally crying with laughter.
marym625
(17,997 posts)They should use it in high schools. Maybe kids would care more about history.
Burning man! That's hard to say!
rurallib
(62,465 posts)doing some research on the whole bus boycott story.
It reminded me that there are many stories in history where the person who becomes attached to a story or who may get credit for an invention is not always the first to the line.
marym625
(17,997 posts)rurallib
(62,465 posts)radio is another
marym625
(17,997 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)I made one out of gray clay. It was my first project not done in school. (Not my first homework, but my first home project). We had to have a partner. Annette made hers out of brown clay.
Eli Whitney was the name in my textbook. Wiki says:
The popular image of Whitney inventing the cotton gin is attributed to an article on the subject written in the early 1870s and later reprinted in 1910 in The Library of Southern Literature. In this article, the author claimed Catherine Littlefield Greene suggested to Whitney the use of a brush-like component instrumental in separating out the seeds and cotton. To date, Greene's role in the invention of the gin has not been verified independently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin
rurallib
(62,465 posts)Rosalind Franklin and Watson and Crick.
IIRC Franklin discovered the double helix form for DNA. Since women were pretty much considered as non-entities in the science world, Watson and Crick basically took her findings and presented them as their own.
Seems most of what I learned in school was crap. Must have been taught it that way for some reason.
merrily
(45,251 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)Wish I did
merrily
(45,251 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)What was we thinking?
merrily
(45,251 posts)We're easily amused. Makes life so much better!
merrily
(45,251 posts)In unison, of course. And, yes, it does make life so much better. That's why we love us.
marym625
(17,997 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)loyalsister
(13,390 posts)As soon as the two black women got on, the conductor balked. Get off, he insisted. Jennings declined. Finally he told the women they could ride, but that if any white passengers objected, "you shall go out or I'll put you out."
Arthur, who would go on to become president upon the assassination of James Garfield in 1881, was at the time a beginner in his 20's only recently admitted to the bar. He nevertheless won the case, against the Third Avenue Railway Company; a judge ruled that "colored persons if sober, well behaved, and free from disease" could not be excluded from public conveyances "by any rules of the Company, nor by force or violence," according to newspaper reports. "Our readers will rejoice with us" in the "righteous verdict," remarked Frederick Douglass' Paper.
NEW YORK before the Civil War resembled the Jim Crow South of Rosa Parks's era in at least this respect: A pervasive racial caste system decreed that a great deal of space -- in schools, restaurants, workplaces and churches -- was strictly off-limits to African-Americans. The city's transit system, in its infancy, was a particularly bitter proving ground.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/nyregion/thecity/the-schoolteacher-on-the-streetcar.html
iandhr
(6,852 posts)I never heard of her before this.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)By Rita Dove
Menial twilight sweeps the storefronts along Lexington
as the shadows arrive to take their places
among the scourge of the earth. Here and there
a fickle brilliance lightbulbs coming on
in each narrow residence, the golden wattage
of bleak interiors announcing Anyone home?
or Im beat, bring me a beer.
Mostly I say to myself Still here. Lay
my keys on the table, pack the perishables away
before flipping the switch. I like the sugary
look of things in bad light one drop of sweat
is all it would take to dissolve an armchair pillow
into brocade residue. Sometimes I wait until
its dark enough for my body to disappear;
then I know its time to start out for work.
Along the Avenue, the cabs start up, heading
toward midtown; neon stutters into ecstasy
as male integers light up their smokes and let loose
a stream of brave talk: Hey Mama souring quickly to
Your Mama when theres no answer as if
the most injury they can do is insult the reason
youre here at all, walking your whites
down to the stop so you can make a living.
So ugly, so fat, so dumb, so greasy
What do we have to do to make God love us?
Mama was a maid; my daddy mowed lawns like a boy,
and Im the crazy girl off the bus, the one
who wrote in class she was going to be President.
I take the Number 6 bus to the Lex Ave train
and then Im there all night, adjusting the sheets,
emptying the pans. And I dont care or spit
or kick and scratch like they say I did then.
I help those who cant help themselves,
I do what needs to be done. . . and I sleep
whenever sleep comes down on me.