#aurelia browder

[garadinervi]

Testimony from Aurelia S. Browder et al. v. W. A. Gayle, et al., No 1147, District Court of the United States for the Middle District of Alabama, Northern Division, May 11, 1956 (pdf here) [Civil Case Files, 1938-1995, Records of the District Courts of the United States, Civil Rights Digital Library, Digital Library of Georgia, GALILEO, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, GA]

[thechristiansuburbanblackgirl]

This Woman’s Work: Why Black Women Can Never Catch a Break

by Diana Carmela

Black women are the blueprint for everything, yet we are the butt of every joke. There have been so many cases of our features getting praised…but not on us. Our trauma is a source of entertainment, our downfall is the source of another’s upbringing, and our femininity is the source of white pseudodisenfranchisement. Unfortunately, it may never end. Why? Because we are black women.

It’s no secret that slavery laid the foundation for the way that black women are looked at in the world. We were brought to a country where our beauty and innovation were replaced with ridicule and shame. We saw how the white people lived way better. Different, but better. This difference is how the narrative shifted. We saw how white women, despite their gender, still got treated better by white men than anyone else in the room. She was never property. She was never given excruciatingly painful outside labor. She was never raped openly. She was never to be addressed as anything but as a woman. The same cannot be said for us.

Many know Ida B. Wells for her work in civil rights, but she was also known for suing a railroad company for forcing her out of a train car. In a similar case to Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, and most famously, Rosa Parks, Ida had refused to give up her seat on the basis of her being in the correct car—the Ladies car. The conductor however, thought otherwise, and because of this, forced her out rather furiously. In the book, “From Slavery to Freedom”, this basis is described as the following, “Such segregation laws permitted a train conductor to deem Ida B. Wells neither white nor a lady” (Franklin, 2021. p. 300.). What the book does not mention, however, is that she was demanded to be castrated due to the basis mentioned. This proves a point that many black women have been trying to prove for years—black women cannot exist as women without our femininity being questioned or outright denied.

A more recent example would be with Megan Pete, better known as rapper Megan Thee Stallion. At the rise of her career, her music began to be overshadowed by her coming out and saying on Instagram that she had been shot in the foot by R&B singer turned rapper, Tory Lanez, with the blatant statement, “Tory, you shot me” (Pete, 2020). Many began to speculate on why Tory, born Daystar Peterson, would shoot Megan, and many resulted to transphobia, stating that reason why was because he had found out that she was a man. While this is in fact false, with court documents from the state of California in reference to Tory’s arrest for illegal gun possession earlier in 2023 to prove it, Megan still continues to face masculinisation from the world. This was unfortunately not the first time she has faced this, as she faced it at the start of her career for her height, standing at 5’10”. Due to the roles that were given to us during slavery, we have never been able to apply the traditional gender roles of masculinity and femininity in the same way that other ethnic groups are.

This constant need to prove our femininity is something that is a uniquely black feminine experience. It’s baffling how this not only affects our relationships with other ethnic groups, but also with our own community. The connection that we are to have based on a sense of common experience, is destroyed by two things—the forcing of Eurocentric ideals onto our people, and the allowed impressionablily of black men. Now I don’t say the latter in a way to call black men dumb, because intelligence is somewhat subjective if you ask me, but with the infantilisation of black men, it seems as though the “boys will be boys” excuse has now become a mindset that has been extended to a degree to black men, something that black women have never had. I’ll use myself as an example. During my freshman year of high school, a black male student thought it was acceptable to slap my butt when walking past me whilst in the view of a teacher. When I reported the incident as sexual harassment, I was told that it was most likely an accident and that I should focus on my studies because again, “boys will be boys”. You may be saying, “Now Diana, white women don’t have an excuse like that either”. They do…in the form of their femininity.

“White women tears”. We’ve all heard of them, and I’m sure plenty of us have seen them. The thing is, these don’t always come in the form of a clear, salty liquid from the eyes, but rather a need to prove something to men. Remember when I said the word “pseudodisenfranchisement” in the introduction? Allow me to define it for you. Pseudodisenfranchisement, per my own words, though not my own creation, is a belief system in which the majority believes that they are the minority, and in response, they enforce the dominance that they never lost in the first place. This is something that has influenced white women in more ways than people think. I’m sure we’ve all heard of Susan B. Anthony, a woman who was known for being one of the most prominent suffragettes in history. Yet it was an organization founded around her cause that didn’t allow black women to apply after the 19th amendment was ratified, as revealed on page 421 of the book, “From Slavery to Freedom”. We’ve heard of Sara Baartman, an African woman who was taken to France and placed in a human zoo and then a freak show for having a large butt. The response from white people, you may ask? In men, sexualisation and further reason to fetishise us. In women, the bustle, an invention in French fashion created with a belt and cylindrical wiring, to emulate a large backside. Her large backside. From what I’ve noticed nowadays, there has never been a time where a white man has ever invented something as a way of copying a black man because white men weren’t getting any attention from white women. Why? Because they never have to. At the end of the day, white men are still in control, therefore they don’t have to compete. This seemingly made up competition based on our femininity is another uniquely black feminine experience.

I’ve mentioned fetishisation rather implicitly in this essay. What is a fetish exactly? In the normal sense, it is a sexual desire for, or attraction to something that is not typically seen as salacious. This can range from balloons to feet. While fetishisation is not a unique experience for black women, the levels of it for us is very much so. We face it from every ethnic group, but most prominently from white men. According to page 448 of the book, “From Slavery to Freedom”, many books published by black women during the Harlem Renaissance discussed this phenomenon. One book saying, “Her white lover sees her only through the lens of primitivism” (Franklin, 2021). This was said in reference to a black female character who was with a white man romantically, but the man was with her for the sake of a lustful urge. Another instance of fetishisation that is specific to black women is being fetishised by our own men. Whether people want to admit it or not, there are countless black men who fetishise black women, some of which I have come across in my own life. Calling us things like “chocolate”, a “black queen”, or “pretty for a black girl”, along with constantly mentioning our bodies when you see us, like saying we have DSLs or any other way people can twist it, is not only deeply dehumanising, but also just plain creepy. One instance that I can name is when a guy that I used to be friends with told me that I was “butterscotch” and therefore I was better than any black girl he knew in school. Need I mention that this was a black man with two black parents and three black sisters? Yeah, gross. I know.

As an Afro-Latina who has been fetishised for most of her life, knowing the basic definition of a fetish and fetishisation, it leaves me to ponder some things. Things that black men from what I’ve observed, never have to think about. Why do you never hear of Asian women bringing down Latinas whenever they have a Latino partner? Why are we the token group that gets the dirt from which the stick came from, let alone the shortest end? The main question I’ve asked however, is this one. If we look at the definition provided of what a fetish is, how on Earth can black women be a fetish if we were never given the chance to prove that we are not automatically sexual?

Another thing I ponder about is the belief that many black men have created on how we, black women, cannot submit to black men. Many will argue that this is a new belief that has come with the Digital Age and the rise of social media, but it unfortunately is not new. The earliest trace of this mindset that I have found is on page 423 of the book “From Slavery to Freedom”, with famous Civil Rights activist Marcus Garvey musing nostalgically aloud, “Let us go back to the days of true manhood when women truly reverenced us. We would have many more mothers, many more virtuous wives, many more amiable and lovable daughters.” (Garvey, The Negro World). Am I well aware of the fact that this kind of gender discrimination is prominent in all ethnic groups? Yes, yes I am. I’m a double minority in this country myself. However, the difference is, that in the case of black women, we are being told this often by men who have never been systematically able to lay down the financial, emotional, or physical foundation for us to submit, as evidenced by the slavery to mass incarceration pipeline of black men, leaving black women to pick up the slack and be both the man and the women. I would also like to add that the idea of submission is very twisted in the world, but especially within the black community, as many men within it believe that we are simply supposed to submit to them because they are a man, when that should never be the case at all. This also leads to a relationship gap within our own community that only black women face. When men of other ethnic groups were to go off into war, the women of their ethnic communities were allowed to be docile and take care of the home in a way that was unapologetically feminine in nature, something that black women have, for the most part, never experienced.

This unfortunately doesn’t only affect our bodies, but also the beliefs and possibilities of how we are to act in our homes. Mary Church Terrell, the founder of the National Association for Colored Women has been described on page 361 of the book, “From Slavery to Freedom” to believe that black women should work on their presence in the domestic sphere, meaning the home and family. While this base ideal isn’t entirely problematic, the othering of you and those who agree with you as “best women”, definitely is. The ability for black women to be housewives and homemakers was not only heavily criticised by men, but also black women. Unfortunately, this is so normalised within our own community to the point where most black men even get angry whenever you correct their actions. This also affects another aspect of dating and marriage that is a uniquely black feminine experience.

Isn’t it also weird as to how we are the ones targeted the most for dating outside of our race and/or ethnicity? We are the ones who get people’s sons kicked out for the choice of who they love. We are the ones that get told that we are “worsening our race” by our own men and women. My own friend Asharia, who is currently dating a white man, was told by their father to, “think about their ancestors” when they told their parents about him. Funnily enough, a lot of this comes from a place of discrimination that is simply used as a way to limit the choice of the black woman in her own life. No one bats an eye at a black man with a non-black woman. If anything, it’s relatively praised in comparison. This is especially prevalent with black women who date white men, which brings me to a concept that I like to call the Afro-Europa pipeline, which refers to the phenomena of black women, specifically black American women traveling to European countries in order to avoid or lessen racial discrimination and sexism. The best example of someone who has benefited the most from this pipeline is Josephine Baker, who is mentioned on pages 450 and 451 of the book, “From Slavery to Freedom”, as she became an expatriate in the early 20th century, earning praise for her performances in clubs and even in social justice, working for the French Resistance during World War ll.

In conclusion, the role that gender plays on the black experience is more complex than most realize. Our gender and our race can never be separated from one another, and because of this, the grace we receive in the world by others is minimal to none for doing things that others would simply get a slap on the wrist for. The things that we face are not on a simple basis of blackhood or womanhood, but rather an intersection of both, especially when it affects how we navigate through life and communicate with every human on Earth.

[coochiequeens]

Today for Women’s History March we honor Claudette Colvin

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

A full nine months before Rosa Parks's famous act of civil disobedience, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin is arrested on March 2, 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus. 

Colvin was traveling home from school when the bus' driver ordered her, along with three fellow Black students, to give up their row of seats to a white passenger. Colvin’s friends obliged, but she refused to move. At school, she had recently learned about abolitionists, and later recalled that “it felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn’t get up.”

Montgomery segregation laws at the time dictated that Black passengers sit behind white passengers on public transportation, and bus drivers routinely moved Black passengers to make room for white passengers. Colvin, in refusing to move, cited that she paid her fare and staying seated was her constitutional right. She was then forcibly removed from the bus by two police officers, handcuffed and arrested, and booked in a local adult jail. She was charged with violating segregation law, disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer. (The former two charges were dropped, but the latter stayed on her record until it was expunged over six decades later in 2021.)

After being picked up by her parents that day, Colvin recalled her father’s fear of reprisal from the Ku Klux Klan and recounted that he did not sleep that night and instead sat armed with a fully loaded shotgun.

Colvin’s arrest was not the first instance of a Black person in the South refusing to give up their seat on a bus to a white passenger, but it did come at a pivotal moment for the civil rights movement. Fred D. Gray, a prominent Montgomery lawyer and activist, took Colvin on as a client—his first civil rights case—with the aim of filing a federal suit to desegregate Alabama's bus system. Local civil rights leaders, however, decided not to proceed, in part due to Colvin’s age but also because, by her own assessment, she was too dark-skinned and soon became pregnant at age 16. These factors, some feared, would hurt her chances of winning the case—unlike the known community figure who soon followed in her footsteps: Rosa Parks. 

On December 1, 1955, Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress and NAACP secretary, also refused to vacate her seat on a Montgomery bus for a white passenger, and was arrested. Days later, segregated buses became a central site of struggle: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, during which Black residents refused to use the city bus system, began on December 5, 1955. On its first day, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., proclaimed: “My friends, I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. … we are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong.”

In 1956, that claim went to court: Gray, alongside Charles D. Langford, brought a legal case before the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, which challenged the constitutionality of bus segregation in both the city of Montgomery and the state as a whole. Known as Browder v. Gayle, it was filed on behalf of four Black women who, the district court later determined, were treated unconstitutionally on the Montgomery’s bus system: Colvin, Susie McDonald, Aurelia S. Browder and Mary Louise Smith—another teenager whose bus protest predated Park's. (A fifth plaintiff, Jeanetta Reese, was intimidated to withdraw from the case.)

Browder v. Gayle ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the earlier ruling that bus segregation was in violation of the 14th Amendment. Attempts at appeal were rejected, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott—considered the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation—came to a close on December 20, 1956, 381 days after it began, and one year, nine months and 18 days after Colvin's arrest.

[therebelwrites]

Rosa Parks, Respectability Politics and Hidden Figures

I love Rosa Parks. In addition to her role in the Civil Rights Movement, she was significantly more rebellious than most journalists, historians and teachers paint her out to be. (I posted a link about this a while ago.)

What most people don’t realize is that, aside from being a rebel, Rosa Parks was actually NOT the first Black woman to refuse to give up her seat on a bus in the segregated South:

She was the most “marketable.”

Long before Park’s resistance was choreographed and written into history, there were many young Black women in Montgomery who refused to surrender their seats to fellow white bus riders (as a result of their own moral conviction), yet whose heroic deeds were obscured by their social and domestic circumstances. Claudette Colvin was arrested a full 9 months before Rosa Parks, yet because she was only 15 years old, from a poor family and spoke with passion (rather than “respectability”) and eventually became a teen mother, she was not deemed “fit” by the NAACP to be the symbol of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 

Mary Louise Smith was arrested at the age of 18 a full 2 months before Rosa Parks was booked. Like Colvin, Smith was unable to become the face of the boycott due to her home circumstances: it was rumored that her father was an alcoholic. 

Rosa Parks was chosen because she was from a stable home environment, she was older (and thus seen as more “mature”), employed, and she was perceived to be less rebellious and more demure than the other women.

In a word, Parks was selected to carry the historical torch on behalf of all bus-riding Blacks in Montgomery-- and subsequently, the American South-- simply because she was more “RESPECTABLE.”

Even then, the POOR, outwardly fierce Black woman was forced to take a back seat to the more marketable, middle-class Black woman. 

Respectability is a dangerous game!!!

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Claudette Colvin

Bronx resident Claudette Colvin in 2009. (Credit: Julie Jacobson/AP Photo)

The Teenager Who Refused to Give Up Her Bus Seat Before Rosa Parks

When Claudette Colvin‘s high school in Montgomery, Alabama, observed Negro History Week in 1955, the 15-year-old had no way of knowing how the stories of Black freedom fighters would soon impact her life. “I knew I had to do something,” she later told USA Today. “I just didn’t know where or when.”

Colvin got her chance on March 2, 1955, when she boarded a bus in downtown Montgomery. She and three other Black students were told to give up their seats for a white woman. Colvin, emboldened by her history lessons, refused. “My head was just too full of Black history,” she stated in an interview with NPR. “It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn’t get up.”

Colvin was arrested and eventually put on indefinite probation. Though Colvin’s courageous act occurred nine months before Rosa Parks’ similar protest, the NAACP chose to use the 42-year-old civil rights activist as the public face of the Montgomery bus boycott, as they believed an unwed mother—Colvin became pregnant when she was 16—would not be the best face for the movement. Colvin felt slighted, but later joined three other women—Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder and Susie McDonald—as the plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the case that ultimately overturned bus segregation in Alabama.

Colvin rarely talked about her heroic actions until the 1990s. “I’d like my grandchildren,” she said, “to be able to see that their grandmother stood up for something, a long time ago.”

https://www.history.com/news/six-unsung-heroines-of-the-civil-rights-movement

[todaysdocument]

This diagram shows where Rosa Parks was seated on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus on December 1, 1955.

File Unit: Aurelia S. Browder et al. v. W. A. Gayle et al., No. 1147, 9/1938 - 11/26/1968

Series: Civil Cases, 9/1938 - 11/26/1968

Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685 - 2009

Image description: A white-on-black diagram of the location of the seats on the bus. One has the handwritten label “Rosa Parks”. Other text notes that this is “Exhibit A attached to Exhibit C, 2/22/1956.”

[k3mistryproductions]

Claudette Colvin was only 15 years old when in March 1955 she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a White passenger. Her actions defied segregation laws that were in place at the time. Oddly enough, this event occurred around nine months before Rosa Parks repeated the same act. Moreover, Colvin was the first person ever arrested for challenging the bus segregation policies of Montgomery. Because of her defiance, Colvin was arrested and sent to an adult jail. The following year, she testified in a case entitled Aurelia S. Browder v. William A. Gayle, which challenged both Alabama’s statues and Montgomery’s city ordinances that required segregation on Montgomery buses. On June 5, 1956, a three-judge US District Court panel ruled that it was unconstitutional to have segregation on Alabama’s intrastate buses.

[liveforks]

Happy International Women’s Day to all my femme-people out there! 

Here are some of my favourite femmes that I think you should know!

Michelle Obama! 

A Princeton and Harvard graduate. Princeton graduating cum laude and another from Harvard earning a degree. Skipped second grade and attended the Whitney M. Young, the city’s first magnet school for gifted children. 

Bessie Coleman

World’s first Black female pilot! Died tragically at the age of 34, has been awarded many awards since her tragic passing. 

Anna Tibaijuka 

Highest ranked African female in the UN, taking charge of the UN-HABITAT program. Focuses on the rights of women living in slums or without homes.

Madam C.J. Walker

First Black self-made millionaire despite being orphaned at the age of 7.

Shirley Chisholm

First Black female to be elected Congress!

Harriet Tubman 

Helped rescue over 300 former slaves, leading them to freedom. She was also an active spy. 

Michaëlle Jean

Governor General of Canada.

Born in Haiti, fled during the dictatorship of François Duvalier

Confirmed by Queen Elizabeth II.

Mary McLeod Bethune 

Made a school for young African American girls, later becoming a merged school for boys and later on became a University. 

Rosa Parks

Stood up to, (or shall I say, remained seated), upon being told to move from her seat by a White driver. 

Was not the first African American passenger to refuse to move from their seat, before Rosa there had been; Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, Susie McDonald, also helped with the movement. (Rosa Parks was active in helping them through trials)

Wilma Rudolph

Triple Olympic gold medal winner for track and field, despite having life threatening diseases. 

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf 

First Black woman to win a presidential election in Africa.

Coretta Scott King

Followed the movement of her Late husband, Dr. King. King worked as a Civil Rights and Women’s Rights activist and opposed Apartheid in South Africa.

Became involved in the LGBTQ+ Rights movement and urged Civil Rights activists to reject homophobia. 

Frida Kahlo 

Communist, disabled, openly bisexual, suffered a lifetime of healthproblems. A queen if you ask me. 

Mary Jones

Black Trans sex worker.

Stole $99 ($2k today) from a white mason worker, Robert Haslem after sleeping with him. Was sentenced to jail for five years.

Frances Thompson

Former slave.

Was one of the first Black trans women to testify before a congressional committee.

Was r*ped by white men during a riot along former slave Lucy Smith. 

Was arrested for ‘being a man dressed as a woman’ as a way to smear her name across town and take away from the fact that she had been r*ped.

Corazon Aquino 

First female president of the Philippines 

Leader of the People Power Revolution.

Trieu Thi Trinh

When Vietnam came under the Chinese empire in the year 43, Trinh rebelled and created her own army.

Before the age of 21 she had successfully battled more than 30 Chinese armies. 

Chinese feared fighting her. According to legends, she was over 9 feet tall, had a strong voice that rang loud and clear, rode into battle on an elephant and wore golden armour and carried swords in both hands. 

Malala Yousafzai!

Shot by the taliban

Author of ‘I am Malala’

Awarded Pakistan’s first Youth National Peace Prize 

Pakistani activist for female education.

Youngest Nobel Prize laureate

Was a runner up for TIME’s Person of the Year poll

Advocate for Syrian refugees 

(I CANNOT BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT THE GREAT HUMAN THAT IS MALALA. I AM ASHAMED)

I know there are so many other amazing femmes out there that have ruled and shaped the way we are today and helped paved a safer path for people in today’s time. Please don’t come for me on this list, many of these women, (actually all of them were strangers to me, excluding Frida Kahlo, who I learned about in school), I studied these women later on in college when I was asked to do different assignments. Remember, everyone matters, whether they were born womxn or later viewed themselves as womxn. Race, colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, disabilities, or anything else, we should love and appreciate each other. You are strong, capable, amazing, beautiful, and magical (don’t forget magical). Make your mark in this world, the future is female. 

[stephanie-light]

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a seminal moment in the Civil Rights Movement. You've probably heard about Rosa Parks, but she's not the reason segregation on buses was defined as unconstitutional. Several months before Rosa Parks refused to leave her seat, Claudette Colvin did the very same thing. So did Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia S. Browder, and Miss Sue McDonald. There's a lot of speculation about why Claudette isn't a household name. She was a teenager, has darker skin, and there was a malintended rumor that she was pregnant (not so, in fact many scholars argue that she was not taken seriously simply because she was young and her skin was darker). I was about 19 and I had just joined the Army when I first learned who Claudette Colvin was and I was so impressed by how brave she'd been as such a young person. I remember thinking about the shark attacks we had in boot camp and how terrified I was. I was amazed she probably faced similar attacks as a 15 year old, but unlike my experience, these attacks against her wouldn't let up and posed a very real threat to her safety. Now, reflecting on the legacy these women and Browder v. Gayle have left in their wake, I'm reminded of the power to selectively cultivate a narrative. Always ask, "Who's missing?" . . . #montgomerybusboycott #boycott #civilrightsmovement #rosaparks #claudettecolvin #marylouisesmith #aureliabrowder #browdervgayle #suemcdonald #blackhistoryisamericanhistory #blackhistory #blackfuturesmatter #blacknow #liesmyhistoryteachertoldme #colorism #shareblackstories https://www.instagram.com/p/CK5PfgODYSN/?igshid=1o9saju4072r4

[garadinervi]

Claudette Colvin – Testimony from Aurelia S. Browder et al. v. W. A. Gayle, et al., No 1147, District Court of the United States for the Middle District of Alabama, Northern Division, May 11, 1956, pp. 17-22 (pdf here) [Civil Case Files, 1938-1995, Records of the District Courts of the United States, Civil Rights Digital Library, Digital Library of Georgia, GALILEO, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, GA]

[theunsungheroines]

Before you read this I’d like to say I googled this woman for quite some time and could hardly find a photo of her. It was also very difficult to find a photo from yesterdays post of Claudette Colvin. It infuriates me that these women’s stories are barely visible online. Anyway….. Aurelia Browder was arrested on April 19, 1955, almost eight months before the arrest of Rosa Parks and a month after the arrest of Claudette Colvin, for sitting in the white section of a public city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was convicted and fined for her alleged crime. On February 1, 1956, Fred Gray and Robert L. Carter of the NAACP Legal Defense filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court on behalf of five black women who had been the victims of discrimination on local buses. W.A. Gayle, the Mayor of Montgomery, was the defendant. The Montgomery Improvement Association had its sights set on ending segregation and was fueled by the Montgomery Bus Boycott which was led primarily by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. The boycott began on December 3, 1955, two days after Rosa Parks’ arrest. The Montgomery Improvement Association filed Browder’s case because it would be able to skip being heard in the local courts. Rosa Park’s case would have had to go through local courts first, where the case might have stayed pending for years. By filing directly with the District Courts, they would also be able to achieve an injunction against the segregation law at the same time. Later in life, she spent some time teaching veterans at the Loveless School and established her own business. Browder’s son, Butler Browder, feels that his mother’s legacy has been overshadowed. In a 2005 article in the Montgomery Advertiser Butler wrote, “The truth is Browder vs. Gayle changed the laws that mandated bus segregation. If it weren’t for that case and continued efforts to end segregation in this country, we might still be marching.” #theunsungheroines

[saiddibinga]

True story. Bus protest before Rosa Parks. The 15-year-olds name is Claudette Colvin, check out her story. * * This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was famously arrested for the same offense. Colvin later said: "My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. She told me to let Rosa be the one: white people aren't going to bother Rosa, they like her". Colvin did not receive the same attention as Parks for a number of reasons: she did not have ‘good hair’, she was not fair skinned, she was a teenager, she got pregnant. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the ‘most appealing’ protesters the most seen. Recognition is due for the other people who participated in the movement. Aetonormativity contributed to the decision to make Rosa Parks the face of the movement. * * Her case, Browder v. Gayle, she was one of 5 plaintiffs (together with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanetta Reese...Jeanette later resigned from the case) Colvin was in the court case as it made its way through the courts. On June 5, 1956, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama issued a ruling declaring the state of Alabama and Montgomery's laws mandating public bus segregation as unconstitutional. State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. One month later, the Supreme Court declined to reconsider, and on December 20, 1956, the court ordered Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation permanently. #yourhistory #history #america #teen #protest #montgomery #alabama (at Montgomery, Alabama) https://www.instagram.com/p/CBXtaeRJo9l85DhfVVyeDUnRwsMjvq1EdWyMDg0/?igshid=5vb9oxgl3oqi

[sciencespies]

A Notorious 17th-Century Pirate, the Many Lives of the Louvre and Other New Books to Read

https://sciencespies.com/nature/a-notorious-17th-century-pirate-the-many-lives-of-the-louvre-and-other-new-books-to-read/

A Notorious 17th-Century Pirate, the Many Lives of the Louvre and Other New Books to Read

When Captain Henry Every and his crew of marauders ambushed the pride of the Mughal fleet in September 1695, they set in motion an international crisis with lasting implications. As Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map and How We Got to Now, writes in Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History’s First Global Manhunt, Every’s capture of the Ganj-i-Sawai—and its trove of an estimated $200 million in gold, silver and jewels—led the British East India Company to take harsh retaliatory measures. In doing so, Johnson argues, the corporation and Every inadvertently sparked the birth of a modern phenomenon: multinational capitalism.

The latest installment in our “Books of the Week” series, which launched in late March to support authors whose works have been overshadowed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, details the search for Every, the many lives of the Louvre, the Montgomery bus boycott, the humans behind history’s greatest firsts and a titan of industry’s ideological clash with Theodore Roosevelt.

Representing the fields of history, science, arts and culture, innovation, and travel, selections represent texts that piqued our curiosity with their new approaches to oft-discussed topics, elevation of overlooked stories and artful prose. We’ve linked to Amazon for your convenience, but be sure to check with your local bookstore to see if it supports social distancing-appropriate delivery or pickup measures, too.

Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History’s First Global Manhunt by Steven Johnson

By all accounts, the Ganj-i-Sawai should’ve emerged victorious against the Fancy, a comparatively underequipped privateer ship. But luck was on Every’s side when the vessels met, and as Kirkus notes in its review of Enemy of All Mankind, Grand Mughal Aurangzeb’s flagship experienced a cannon misfire “even as a lucky shot from the pirate fleet took down the main mast.” Upon boarding the Ganj-i-Sawai, Every and his crew raped its women, tortured and murdered its men, and looted its treasure trove of goods.

The incident left the East India Company—and its trading interests in the Asian country—in a challenging position. Accused by Aurangzeb and his followers of hailing from a “nation of pirates” simply because Every was also British, the company teamed up with the crown to launch what Johnson deems the “first global manhunt.” Ultimately, the search proved only partially successful. Every escaped the hangman’s noose, though several of his comrades were captured and executed.

Despite this apparent failure, Johnson argues that the manhunt ushered in a much-needed reckoning between a soon-to-be outdated mode of money-making (autocracy funded by tithes, taxes and other forms of exploitation) and the way of the future: “a multinational corporation making money by trading goods with other nations, with shareholders profiting not just from the income generated, but also by the rising share price of the company itself.”

The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum by James Gardner

The Louvre is perhaps best known today as the home of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. But the palatial complex boasted a rich history long before the world’s most famous painting graced its walls. As James Gardner writes in his extensive exploration of the Parisian cultural institution—which he deems “as great a work of art as anything it contains”—the Louvre’s story actually stretches back some 7,000 years. “Before the Louvre was a museum,” the art critic explains in the book’s introduction, “it was a palace, and before that a fortress, and before that a plot of earth, much like any other.”

In 1191, French king Philippe Auguste ordered the construction of a defensive stronghold on the banks of the Seine River. Thousands of years earlier, according to Gardner, the site had served first as a campground and then as the home of a clay quarry and vineyard. During the 13th century, Charles V converted the fortress into a castle, laying the foundations for 16th-century king Francis I’s adoption of it as his main residence. But when Louis XIV chose Versailles as the main royal palace in 1682, the Louvre underwent a century of neglect. Finally, in 1793, the property assumed the role it holds to this day, opening as a public museum filled with art and artifacts—the majority of which were seized from France’s nobility amid the chaos of the French Revolution.

Writes Gardner, “What we see today is the result of no fewer than twenty distinct building campaigns that drew on the very diverse and unequal talents of scores of architects over eight centuries.”

Daughter of the Boycott: Carrying On a Montgomery Family’s Civil Rights Legacy by Karen Gray Houston

Fred and Thomas Gray played pivotal roles in the civil rights movement, aiding the organization of the Montgomery bus boycott and battling segregation in court, respectively. In Daughter of the Boycott, journalist Karen Gray Houston reflects on her relatives’ legacy, detailing how her father, Thomas—a founding member of the Montgomery Improvement Association—“drove his car to pick up black passengers to keep them off the buses [and] make the boycott a success,” while his younger brother, Fred, spearheaded legal cases that expanded voting rights and “desegregated transportation, schools, housing, and public accommodations.”

In addition to discussing her father’s and uncle’s work, Houston draws on interviews with individuals including the daughter-in-law of the manager whose bus line was targeted by protesters and the son of Aurelia Browder Coleman, lead plaintiff in the Browder v. Gayle Supreme Court case that resulted in the desegregation of Montgomery’s buses. According to Kirkus’ review of Daughter of the Boycott, Houston’s “real coup” is a conversation with fellow Browder plaintiff Claudette Colvin, who refused to yield her seat to a white passenger nine months before Rosa Parks famously did the same.

Who Ate the First Oyster?: The Extraordinary People Behind the Greatest Firsts in History by Cody Cassidy

To gain a better understanding of the individuals behind history’s “greatest firsts,” science writer Cody Cassidy interviewed more than 100 experts, started a fire with flint and pyrite, shaved his face with a piece of obsidian, and brewed beer using spoiled gruel. This unconventional research method ultimately yielded insights on 17 historical innovators whose accomplishments range from eating the first oyster to discovering soap, painting the world’s first masterpiece, inventing clothing and performing the first surgery.

Among the many curiosities highlighted in the book: The first person whose name survives in the historical record is an accountant named Kushim who lived some 5,000 years ago. A young Australopithecus mother crafted the world’s first invention—a baby sling—approximately three million years ago. And the creator of clothing, a Homo sapien the author nicknames Ralph, invented fashionable attire not for protection, warmth or modesty, but as decoration.

Cassidy’s sweeping exploration is limited by the simple fact that the individuals featured “lived before or without writing.” Still, he writes in the book’s introduction, “These are people who scholars know existed and whose extraordinary or fateful acts are the foundation of modern life.”

The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield

As Publishers Weekly notes in its review of journalist Susan Berfield’s debut book, Theodore Roosevelt and financier J.P. Morgan both hailed from upper-class families and endured childhoods marred by illness. Despite these similarities, the pair vehemently disagreed on political and economic issues: Whereas Roosevelt argued that big business “had to be accountable to the public,” according to Berfield, Morgan believed capitalism should operate unchecked by all except titans of industry.

These conflicting views came to a head on September 14, 1901, when President William McKinley’s assassination made his vice president, Roosevelt, the United States’ new commander in chief. Roosevelt and Morgan, who at the time was among the richest men in the nation, viewed each other with distrust and uncertainty. When Morgan reportedly said, “I am afraid of Mr. Roosevelt because I don’t know what he’ll do,” the president replied, “He’s afraid of me because he does know what I’ll do.”

The Hour of Fate’s main action unfolds in 1902, when the government accused Morgan’s Northern Securities of antitrust violations, only to be stymied by a coal mining union strike that left both the railroad industry and the country, which relied on coal to heat its citizens’ homes, in a precarious position.

Writes Berfield, “With millions of dollars on the line, winter bearing down, and revolution in the air, it was a crisis that neither man alone could solve.”

#Nature

[chronsofnon]

Nine months before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Besides just Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith engaged in the same act of defiance, refusing to give up their seats and getting arrested for it. Their charges and arrests culminated in lawsuit, Browder v. Gayle, which took direct aim at Alabama’s Jim Crow laws. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and was ruled that segregation was unconstitutional at every step. The reason Colvin’s effort was not publicized until recently is because the she unmarried and pregnant. Even Rosa Parks said, “If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance." Sadly, she was not wrong. Colvin’s fight against racism would be thwarted by society’s misogyny. Though Rosa Parks became the face of defiance against Alabama’s cruel laws, Colvin, Browder, McDonald, and Smith laid the ground work. #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackYouthMatter https://www.instagram.com/p/B8zGu7GB4Vc/?igshid=3svpadpmln1v

[thesexypolitico]

New Post has been published on https://thesexypolitico.com/2019/12/01/rosa-parks-monument-in-montgomery-alabama/

Rosa Parks Monument in Montgomery, Alabama

December 1, 1955, forty-two-year-old Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama. According to the National Archives, at that time the buses could be segregated by race, depending on where you lived in the United States. In Alabama, the first ten rows were reserved for white people. Parks was sitting in the first row directly behind the white section. She was clearly in the section designated for people of colour. As the bus filled up the bus driver told the passengers of colour to move further back so that white passengers could take those seats.

Rosa Parks refused. The bus driver called the police. Parks was charged with, “refusing to obey orders of bus driver.” While Parks was not the first person arrested for disobeying segregation laws on Montgomery buses, because of Parks’s character and her involvement in the civil rights community in Mongomery, her arrest became a rallying point for the African American community in Montgomery. Martin Luther King Jr organized a peaceful bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama that lasted 381 days. This was King’s first primate role in the Civil Right’s movement.

Parks was convicted by the city of Montgomery, but her attorney appealed her conviction. In the meantime, the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama heard the case of Browder v. Gayle which ruled that segregation of city buses was unconstitutional due to the 14th Ammendt’s Equal protection clause. The Supreme Court upheld the Browder decision by refusing to hear the case themselves. When the Supreme Court refuses to hear a case that means that the lower court’s ruling stands.

December 1st 2019 Rosa Parks will be honoured with a statue at the Court Street Fountain in Montgomery. Also today the women involved in the Browder case (Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, Susie McDonald and Claudette Colvin) will be honoured with two markers.

Montgomery has had so much history within its borders when it comes to the civil rights movement and it is great to see the city honour those who paved the way for everyone else.

[anewhope4change-blog]

Change through Taking the Road Less Traveled

In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,'' Frost describes himself as deciding to walk down one of two paths, one presumably well-traveled and the other not so much. Many stanzas later, he decides to take the path not often traveled, and happily concludes that it has “made all the difference”. Although relatively short in length and simple in meaning, this poem stretches across time and makes itself known even in today’s tempestuous and uncertain world.

 Although many, many interpretations of this poem exist, most critics, amateur and professional, agree Frost is dealing with the ever-controversial and subjective question of change. More specifically, the central theme of this poem attempts to answer with the age-old question of how a single person can make a difference in the world. Frost is not saying that every decision we make, like deciding which path to travel by, can change the world. Quite the opposite. The two paths that lay open to him were no different from each other, after all, they had “…worn them really about the same”. Whichever path Frost had taken, he would’ve ended up in the same place. However, if that were the case, why write a poem about such a trivial decision? The true meaning of the poem is rather obscured. Frost himself recognized this and made the comment that we, as readers, ought “...to be careful about that one; it’s a tricky poem - very tricky.” (Finger). 

Perhaps we are at fault for trying to find a single meaning to tack onto the poem. One of the more puzzling parts of the poem is towards the end, where Frost writes “I shall be telling this with a sigh - Somewhere ages and ages hence”. When one sighs, it is a sign of relief or regret. It wouldn’t make sense for him to be relieved by telling this story, nor regretful. In 1925, Frost received a letter from a schoolgirl, asking him why he would sigh at the end of the poem. Frost’s replied that it was a “...rather private jest at… those who might think I would yet live to be sorry for the way I had taken in life” (Finger). Pushing past the somewhat antiquated phrasing, he’s basically saying it was meant for anyone who thought he would regret being a poet. That is, those who think he regrets taking the road he decided to take. In order for someone to make a change, whether that is a change in themselves or a change in society, one must remain resolute in their chosen path. After all, if you doubt yourself and the roads you have taken up until now, how can you change anything at all? 

Frost viewed matter itself, in all forms, as “…hostile and resistant to human wishes… yielding only to the most energetic effort of the will” (Sears). Poetry was no exception. Great generals and warlords of the past enforced their will upon the world with wars of conquest, the humble poet has their will put upon the world with words - power with prose, so to speak. Frost’s line of reasoning creates more questions than it answers. Why then, if poetry is an expression of one’s will, would he write a poem about the trivial decision of deciding which road to walk? What difference is he making? The difference is, he is writing about it, and you are not. In making the decision to take the path less traveled by, he is making a difference, however small. To change something, one must desire something to be changed, then act to change it. Often times we associate the idea of “changing the world” with some groundbreaking discovery or some awe-inspiring action. In reality, change can be made with the smallest, most trivial of actions.

 One of the most significant and well-known instances of this can be found in the case of Rosa Parks and her role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott, as the name implies, was centered around the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama. Despite African-Americans making up nearly 75% of riders, they were often forced to surrender their seats to white passengers if seating was scarce (CRMV). Rosa Parks, among many others who participated in the boycott, peacefully protested by refusing to surrender their seats. Although many were arrested, including Rosa Parks herself, the protest carried on for over a year (CRMV). Eventually, the Supreme Court case ruled in favor of Aurelia Browder, a woman arrested amidst the protest a few months after Rosa Parks, in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that segregated buses were unconstitutional under the Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. This, alongside the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, was arguably the first nails in the coffin for Jim Crow-era segregation that afflicted much of the country. 

One woman refusing to give up her seat on a bus in protest of an unjust law led to it becoming unconstitutional. One simple, seemingly trivial act of protest led to nationwide change. Although we remember Rosa Parks for her efforts in the Montgomery bus boycott, she was not the first. Boycotts against segregation in city bus systems, usually as a means to fight the practice of segregation as a whole, stretches as far back as 1946, with Morgan v. Virginia (CRMV). It took 10 years of protest to culminate in figures like Rosa Parks coming to national prominence. Through the widespread success of the Montgomery boycott, figures like Martin Luther King Jr. came to prominence as well, whose importance to the civil rights movement needs no explanation. Through refusing to get out of her seat, Rosa Parks and those who came before and after her, ironically enough, walked the road less traveled. By doing so, they contributed to the success of the civil rights movement not only in the state of Alabama but to the rest of the country as well. 

In today’s world, many of us often feel powerless when we reflect upon the state of our country and our planet. We see events, nationally and internationally, that we feel we cannot change. We are right to a degree. We cannot immediately and directly change things in this world that we do not like. But if we do not act, then why bother hoping for change? Every fire begins with a spark, every hurricane begins as a gust of wind. So too can we change the world by acting, by taking a stand, even in the smallest and most seemingly insignificant way. Change is not always defined by earth-shattering actions and life-changing decisions, but rather, the accumulation of smaller acts. Acts of protest, acts of defiance, acts of kindness - anything and everything can contribute to the genuine change we want to see in the world, all it requires is that we act. We, like Frost, can change the world just by taking the road less traveled.

   Works Cited:

 Sears, John F., and Robert Frost. “William James, Henri Bergson, and the Poetics of Robert

Frost.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 3, 1975, pp. 341–361. JSTOR,    www.jstor.org/stable/364863.

Finger, Larry L. “Frost's ‘The Road Not Taken’: A 1925 Letter Come to Light.” American Literature, vol. 50, no. 3, 1978, pp. 478–479. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2925142.

“Civil Rights Movement History 1955.” Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline, 1955, Civil Rights Movement Veterans, https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis55.htm#1955mbb.