WEBVTT

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I owe the title of this
next book to my daughter.

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We were together
at an event which--

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it was actually a crazy event.

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But what they did was they had
a whole bunch of high school

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students meet with movers
and shakers for a weekend,

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with no press allowed.

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And they were simply supposed to
get to know us, and each of us

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talked a little
bit about our life.

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And on this particular
event, this year,

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that year that happened, Miss
Rosa Parks was also an invitee.

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And so we were being ferried
about on buses from one venue

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to another.

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And one day we kind of--
we got into the bus.

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Rosa Parks was sitting
in the front of the bus.

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And we said hello.

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And me and my daughter
and my husband Fred,

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we all went to the
back of the bus.

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And then my daughter Aviva
turned to me and said,

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we're on the bus
with Rosa Parks.

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And it was so perfectly
iambic, that line, that I said,

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can I have it?

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So hence the title of this book,
On the Bus with Rosa Parks.

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And so thank you, Aviva.

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I'll read a poem.

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You know, there were many
women before Rosa Parks

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who had been arrested for
violating these pretty arcane

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and complicated segregation
rules in Montgomery

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on the transportation system.

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And what happened was they
were looking for a test case.

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They were looking for
someone who could stand up

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to that scrutiny.

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Years later I was watching
a television documentary

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on that entire event.

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And they had found
several of these women,

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and they asked
them what I thought

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was a pretty inane question.

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Sort of, what does it feel
like not to be Rosa Parks?

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And one of the women, she had
been a teenager at that time.

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And she said, I'm
just a girl who people

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were mean to on a bus.

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I could have been anybody.

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That was Mary Smith.

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"The Enactment."

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"Can't use no teenager,
especially no poor Black trash,

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no matter what her parents
do to keep up a living.

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Can't use anyone without sense
enough to bite their tongue.

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It's got to be a woman.

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Someone of standing, preferably
shy, preferably married.

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And she's got to know
when the moment's right.

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Stay polite, though
her shoulders aching,

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bus driver, the same one,
threw her off 12 years before.

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Then all she's got to do is
sit there quiet till the next

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moment finds her, and only then
can she open her mouth to ask,

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'Why do you push us around?'

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And his answer, 'I don't
know, but the law is the law,

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and you are under arrest.'

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She must sit there and not smile
as they enter to carry her off.

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She must know who to
call, who will know who

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else to call to bail her out.

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And only then can she
stand up and exhale.

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Can she walk out the
cell and down the jail

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steps into flashbulbs and
her employer's white arms.

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And go home, and sit down in the
seat we have prepared for her."

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