I owe the title of this next book to my daughter.
We were together at an event which--
it was actually a crazy event.
But what they did was they had a whole bunch of high school
students meet with movers and shakers for a weekend,
with no press allowed.
And they were simply supposed to get to know us, and each of us
talked a little bit about our life.
And on this particular event, this year,
that year that happened, Miss Rosa Parks was also an invitee.
And so we were being ferried about on buses from one venue
to another.
And one day we kind of-- we got into the bus.
Rosa Parks was sitting in the front of the bus.
And we said hello.
And me and my daughter and my husband Fred,
we all went to the back of the bus.
And then my daughter Aviva turned to me and said,
we're on the bus with Rosa Parks.
And it was so perfectly iambic, that line, that I said,
can I have it?
So hence the title of this book, On the Bus with Rosa Parks.
And so thank you, Aviva.
I'll read a poem.
You know, there were many women before Rosa Parks
who had been arrested for violating these pretty arcane
and complicated segregation rules in Montgomery
on the transportation system.
And what happened was they were looking for a test case.
They were looking for someone who could stand up
to that scrutiny.
Years later I was watching a television documentary
on that entire event.
And they had found several of these women,
and they asked them what I thought
was a pretty inane question.
Sort of, what does it feel like not to be Rosa Parks?
And one of the women, she had been a teenager at that time.
And she said, I'm just a girl who people
were mean to on a bus.
I could have been anybody.
That was Mary Smith.
"The Enactment."
"Can't use no teenager, especially no poor Black trash,
no matter what her parents do to keep up a living.
Can't use anyone without sense enough to bite their tongue.
It's got to be a woman.
Someone of standing, preferably shy, preferably married.
And she's got to know when the moment's right.
Stay polite, though her shoulders aching,
bus driver, the same one, threw her off 12 years before.
Then all she's got to do is sit there quiet till the next
moment finds her, and only then can she open her mouth to ask,
'Why do you push us around?'
And his answer, 'I don't know, but the law is the law,
and you are under arrest.'
She must sit there and not smile as they enter to carry her off.
She must know who to call, who will know who
else to call to bail her out.
And only then can she stand up and exhale.
Can she walk out the cell and down the jail
steps into flashbulbs and her employer's white arms.
And go home, and sit down in the seat we have prepared for her."