Segregation: Mary Mebane's "The Back of the Essay

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Segregation: Mary Mebane's "The Back of the Bus"

Segregation: Defiance in the Back of the Bus

Segregation is a nasty part of America's history. While slavery existed in the United States for more than 200 years before the Civil War (Stonaker & Shepard), it was after the war when the South decided they needed to do something to separate blacks from whites. They came up with and passed some laws called the "black codes" (Stonaker & Shepard). These "codes" were brutally strict rules that forced blacks to never intermingle with whites. Before this time, it's important to remember that there wasn't a need for these limiting laws because 95% of blacks were slaves. Fast forward to December 1, 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. This moment in history is important not only because Parks became a symbol for the Civil Rights Movement and went on to support civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., but she also became a worldwide emblem of what freedom and equality. It was people like Parks and others such as Lizzie Jennings, Claudette Colvin, and Homer Plessy who ignited change in America through a symbolic act of defiance.

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It takes courage to stand up against the system. It takes rebelliousness, stubbornness and defiance in the face of adversity. In the essay entitled "The Back of the Bus," author Mary Mebane depicts a world of oppression in her memory of a bus ride one Saturday morning. What is interesting about her essay is that she depicts a situation in which Rosa Parks found herself in and would later go on to inspire the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Riding a bus is something that people did and do every day, but for black people of the time, it was an event that could lead to major acts of discrimination and could even end up in arrests.

In Mebane's essay, there is a struggle over one seat in particular. A white man gets on the bus and a black man is asked to move so the white man can sit down. Mebane notes that another passenger -- an elderly woman -- then begins to yell saying that the seat that the black man is sitting in is for black people and that a white man can't sit in a black-designated seat. There is the sense that though the seat is designated.....

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