Not all stuff will be recorded. Many times and that really is nobody's deliberate decision, but sometimes I come across interesting stories purely by accident. Here is one:
In the Spring of 1972, my school (a boys school) and my sister's school (a co-ed school) jointly arranged arranged a trip to Florida for their senior class students. My sister was not a senior at the time, so she stayed while I and my older brother went.
We stayed at a hotel called The Colonial. Nice place, not expensive at the time. The staff had no problems with the teachers who accompanied us, but they did not know how to deal with Jamaican teenagers, but they did O.K. and learned real fast.
Our first bus ride was nice. Greyhound is the best. The driver was white, but you could never tell from the way he treated us. Kept us well entertained all the way to each of the attractions we visited and back again to the hotel. Because of that, I use Greyhound every time I visit and must make a long trip.
Public transportation wasn't bad, but something we read on the ticket puzzled us. "Seating in this bus does not depend on race." Why do they have that printed on a bus ticket? When I got back home, my father told me two stories. One was about a lady named Rosa Parkes.
The other is not anywhere in your history books. It occurred in 1956 in Florida. A white Floridian dared to ask a black Jamaican man to move to the back of the bus. My dad knew them. He said that the man was about to comply when the wife launched into a tirade which included some unprintable Jamaican insults which included metaphorical expressions referring to the Floridian as a sanitary napkin (there are 4 metaphors). The Floridian attacked them both and the police had to be called.
They sued the bus company but lost the case. I tried to find any mention of that incident, but only found a transcript of the case. The reference is 266 F.2d 326, Docket No. 17461, United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit, April 20, 1959.
I had wondered why only the man was asked to move until I read the transcript. His wife looked white. I wonder how that bigot now feels? He had assaulted an Anglican minister and his wife.
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Comments: 78
Each person is defined by the decision he/she makes. Having made the opposite decision, you are not one of them.
Dennis, I understand your sentiments, but like Alice and Morgan, I too sometimes feel ashamed at some of the things people of my race sometimes do. I constantly find myself wondering if they understand that their behavior will be a reflection upon an entire race of people by many.
One day, Rosa Parks had so much courage and strength that when her bus arrived to pick her up, she got on the bus, put her money in the slot, and sat in the front of the bus. Black people were supposed to sit in the back. The bus driver told her to move to the back, but she just sat there and refused to move. The driver called the police and they arrested Rosa Parks.
The next day, Raymond Parks went to pick up Rosa from jail. When they got home, Rosa spoke about her time in jail. She had stood up to get a drink of water and the guard told her the drinking fountain was only for white people. This made her furious.
On Dec. 5, 1955, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and JoAnn Robinson looked out of their windows, stood on street corners around the city and watched the yellow buses pass by. There were hardly any black riders since Rosa Park's arrest. It was a miracle. People stopped riding the buses all because of Rosa Parks.
In 1979, Rosa Parks received the Spingarn Medal. In 1980, at the 25th anniversary celebration of the bus boycott, Parks was awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Non-violent Peace Prize. In 1984, she was given the Eleanor Roosevelt Woman of Courage Award.
Rosa Parks is known as a national hero and as a shy girl who stood up against racism and fought for freedom. I know her as the Mother of the Civil Rights movement.
That's not quite correct. Rosa Parks, age 42, sat in the front row of the "black section" and was asked to give up her seat to a white male passenger. That she refused to do, and was arrested. Earlier that same year four other female passengers, Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, on different occasions similarly seated in the black section, had refused to give up their places to white passengers. The four were plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle lawsuit that resulted in a Supreme Court ruling outlawing racist provisions in public transportation laws.
One little question arose, killing the bill... "How do you make someone ride the bus who would rather walk than ever get on that bus again?" There was also the whooping horse-laugh echoing down from every state north of Alabama.
Great find Dave
- The linked document is an appellate court decision reversing a lower court decision in the bus company's favor. In other words, the bus company lost the case on appeal and the lower court was instructed in this decision to order compensation be paid to the Bullocks.
- It is interesting to read that prior to this incident, on January 23, 1956, the bus company had issued a memorandum to its employees "plainly warning the drivers of possible racial disturbances." That would have been less than eight weeks after Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white male passenger (she was seated at the front of the black section of the bus).
So nine months after Rosa Parks' courageous act, after massive demonstrations all around the country, the "safe" way to travel "while black" in west Florida was still at the back of the bus. But the Supreme Court of the US had not yet handed down a decision. On November 13, 1956, the court ruled that Montgomery's segregation laws were unconstitutional. That ruling would have come about two months after the incident with the Bullocks in Perry, Florida, which lies 270 miles southeast of Montgomery by bus.
Now featured at Examining Our Religion.
Utah, which is technicaly in the West and not in the South, was known as the Western Southern state, as it always agreed with the south in voting patterns, rather than like the West.
As a child, the signs 'We reserve the right to refuse seating' were everywhere. I helped my mother get out the vote to the African Americans in 1960 and was a junior member of NAACP.
That's great to know.
Early Mormonism had a range of policies and doctrines relating to race in regard to African-descended people. References to black people, their social condition during the 19th century, and their spiritual place in Western Christianity as well as Mormon scriptures were complicated, with varying degrees and forms of discrimination against black people.
When the Mormons migrated to Missouri they encountered the pro-slavery sentiments of their neighbors. Joseph Smith, Jr. upheld the laws regarding slaves and slaveholders.
Following the death of Joseph Smith, Jr., Mormon leaders beginning with Brigham Young instituted a policy of excluding most people of black African descent (regardless of actual skin color) from Priesthood ordination and from participation in temple ceremonies. These practices continued in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) until September 30, 1978, when the highest bodies of church leadership lifted the ban after stating they had received a revelation.
In my opinion, Mitt Romney ought to be ashamed not speaking out Mormon racism. He ought to be ashamed financing this racist church. I still wonder what did Black people do to harbor such hate. I just can't figure it out.
The Floridian was "mistaken" for telling Rev. Bullock to move to the back of the bus. Whether he realized that the fair-skinned woman sitting next to him was his wife and they were both foreign or he thought she was a representative of Southern White Womanhood needing to be protected is irrelevant in terms of the topic invoked here (Black History Month, civil rights). He'd be WRONG in either case.
(My guess is that the "oral tradition" added that detail to mark them as "real Jamaicans"--a lot of Jamaican stories do that.)
I heard the same details from my parents' friends who also knew the couple. They all said that she became a virago. Some told me that she fought back.
If we're guessing, I will continue to guess that the Bullocks were middle class, not from the wife's color, but from the fact that they had traveled quite extensively (in Europe, South America, and the US).
Anyway, unless you tell me that your dad knew these people well and heard the story directly from them, I will go with the coloring power of the oral tradition. :)
As for the language, I am middle class, I raised my girls middle class and had the assistance and backing from both sets of grandparents. I am also a minister of religion, yet the words that come out of the mouths of my two daughters and my wife when anyone irritates them would shock sailors. So it is not unlikely that Mrs. Bullock used those same insults.
(As I hinted above, what I'm interested in here is the use of these specific "very Jamaican" curse words as markers of "Jamaicanness" in stories. They pop up all the time.)
They still may have embellished the story to reinforce the idea that Mrs. Bullock became a virago.
There has been great progress, but some Floridians still concern me very much.