In the Tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird

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Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's by Sunny Nash has been compared to: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Harper Lee

Sunny Nash

"In the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird, but more stirring because of its real-life perspective, she (Nash) tells her story of a time before the Civil Rights Movement with immediacy and poignancy."

Two women with very different backgrounds, one black and one white, Sunny Nash and Harper Lee, grew up in different decades in the United States of America, and both experienced Jim Crows laws that dictated the behavior of Americans in their everyday lives before Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King   headed the journey from Jim Crow and led the nation into the Civil Rights Movement. 

However, they both write a message of understanding of race relations as those issues related to the times of their lives and families and some that still apply in today's world of computers and social media. Sunny Nash and Harper Lee tell their stories from their own perspectives.

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiographical novel is about Atticus Finch, a white southern attorney, whose defense of a black man accused of raping a white woman during the era of Jim Crow laws when such accusations were common in the United States. The era of Jim Crow laws spanned roughly from about 1867 at the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

To Kill a Mockingbird, told through the voice of Scout, Atticus' young daughter, recalls a time in the recent past when racism and morals were intertwined in such a way that truth was not recognizable. At that time, the emphasis was on the protection of white womanhood against the perceived dangers that black men posed. In reality, the reverse was true. African American women were the real victims in most instances with rape and lynching, which was the primary method used to control the economic status of many black communities around the nation. 

Before Rosa Parks led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she was an expert investigator in cases of rape and lynching of black women in Jim Crow Alabama. Parks was also responsible for changes in black Hollywood and the portrayals of black women in the movies and on television, which had been restricted to servants to white families, demonstrated in the a recent movie, The Help. In fact, the Finch family in To Kill a Mockingbird had a house servant, Calpurnia, whose role was minimal, except for housekeeping and nanny duties.

Bigmama Didn't Shop 
at Woolworth's  
by Sunny Nash

Harper Lee's account of the life and experiences of a little girl in To Kill A Mockingbird is fictional but portrays real life as the people of her town lived it in the Deep South in the 1930s when the nation was filled with children of the Great Depression. To make life in America worse, the lives of many families were being complicated by migrations west to avoid the perils of poverty brought on by the Dust Bowl. 

My account of the life and experiences of a little girl in Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's is nonfiction and portrays my own real life and the lives the people who populated my world. When I was growing up, there was Hollywood and there was black Hollywood and they seldom intersected. In the case of To Kill A Mockingbird, however, the two worlds collided on the page and the screen in a way that affected me deeply for the rest of my life.

Harper Lee struck a nerve in mid-century America with her story that was set in the Jim Crow 1930s Deep South, a period being played out during my childhood when Rosa Parks was leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56. Those days were lingering as I entered adulthood and prepared to make my own way in the world. Lee's book came into my possession when it was new. My mother, who bought books on a regular basis, bought the book for my birthday. When the movie came out, my mother took me to see it. Then we discussed the subject in detail. That was the beginning of my interest on writing about race relations in America, eventually leading to my own book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's.

"Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

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Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash is the author of Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press), about life with her part-Comanche grandmother before the Civil Rights Movement ended Jim Crow laws. Nash’s book is recognized by the Association of American University Presses as essential for understanding U.S. race relations; listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York; and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida.  

Sunny Nash--author, producer, photographer and leading writer on U.S. race relations in--writes books, blogs, articles and reviews, and produces media and images on U.S. history and contemporary American topics, ranging from Jim Crow laws to social media networking, Nash uses her book to write articles and blogs on race relations in America through topics relating to her life--from music, film, early radio and television, entertainment, social media, Internet technology, publishing, journalism, sports, education, employment, the military, fashion, performing arts, literature, women's issues, adolescence and childhood, equal rights, social and political movements--past and present—to today's post-racism.

sunnynash.blogspot.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

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Education During Era of Jim Crow Laws

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Education was a theme of conversation during the era of Jim Crow laws.

Brown v the Board of Education
& the Civil Rights Movement

Jim Crow legally segregated schools, colleges, libraries and other educational facilities made getting an education difficult. 

When school segregation was outlawed in 1954 by Brown v the Board of Education, school segregation did not end. It took another ten years, Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964, for some states to start desegregating their schools and they dragged their feet into the 1980s in the North and South with lawsuits and counter lawsuits over Jim Crow laws in education. Still, today, there are predominantly one race or another schools.

Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964

Closely related to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law intended to enforce the 19th century 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which had done little to change the social status of former slaves. Lyndon Johnson signed the new Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, an entire decade after Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott ended Jim Crow laws that affected segregation of public facilities. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, African Americans and other marginalized U.S. citizens were subjected to poll taxes, literacy tests, violence and even lynching to prevent them from organizing a voting block in their communities, particularly in the South where Jim Crow laws were malignant in society.

My mother was offended by segregation but she could not remove me from segregated schools or home school me. My mother worked. My father worked. I was in the care of my mother's mother, my Bigmama, who was probably not inclined to have me around all day, every day throughout the year. So, just shy of home schooling me, my mother sent me to Jim Crow schools. In addition, she bought books, subscribed to periodicals, and developed her own very strict home schooling lesson plan, which was much harder than the lesson plan my schools followed.

With school starting in a few weeks, education should be the topic of the day in all Americans homes. 

When I was growing up, my mother talked about my going to college all the time because education was the most important part of my childhood. She said, "you have a right to an education; everybody does." And she saw to it that I received that right, even before the Civil Rights Movement and Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended Jim Crow laws in education and other public and private services. 

My mother decided to avoid the ills of Jim Crow laws and educate me herself, just shy of homeschooling me. When Brown v the Board of Education desegregated America's public schools on paper, in reality Jim Crow laws still influenced my schools, which remained segregated and did not improve in quality. My mother used the tattered text books and lesson plans, provided by my segregated schools, to give herself a structure for my education, which she conducted at home. 

My mother's plan for my education involved much more than textbooks and teachers.

As wonderful as some of my teachers were. In addition, my mother bought reference books, subscribed to periodicals, took me to museums and galleries in other cities that allowed African Americans, played classical music and jazz on a record player she bought at a second-hand store and, among other enriching lessons, she taught me customs of other cultures, like the Japanese Way of Tea. Besides getting me ready to attend college, my mother had her own plans to go to college one day.

Primarily, though, my education began when the school year ended. The first thing my mother did at the end of the school year was to start preparing to send me away from home so I could experience life outside of Jim Crow laws. "You need to know what's outside of this place," she said. "Knowing is better than not knowing and then guessing about it. But not down South. I am not sending a child of mine down there to be humiliated, dogged and spat upon."

For some reason, we didn't think of Texas as being down south, but more out west, and not as dangerous as Alabama, Mississippi or the Carolinas, where the Greensboro Four staged the Woolworth Sit-ins in 1961 in North Carolina. The Woolworth Sit-ins dashed my childish estimation that South Carolina was worse than North Carolina, just because North Carolina was farther north and anywhere north had to be better than anywhere south. 

But Texas was in the West where African Americans had always enjoyed some amount of freedom, even though segregation was common. In fact, after the Civil War, black former slaves banded together in Texas to form independent black communities in those early days. For many reasons, including racism and economics, these communities did not continue to flourish.

Waco, Texas, 1939 by Russell Lee

However, segregation in Texas was as plain and simple in Texas as it was anywhere else in the United States, including northern and western states that did not have physical signs for separating the races at the movies and other places. Physical signs were not necessary in many cases. 

Entire parts of most cities were segregated, with each race having its own school, facilities and services. People, including white people, knew where they were not welcome. Where this was not the case, in smaller towns of Texas and other southern states, there were hand-written and commercially printed signs to indicate where people of different races entered, sat, rode, ate and waited for services. For the most part, however, people instinctively knew where to go without being directed by "Signs," as my mother said. "Are intended to either degrade people or make other people feel like they may be special."

When I was growing up, the South was in turmoil, but I have to admit, most of the time I did not feel the turmoil, except for seeing it on television or reading about it. Inside our home, there was peace, intelligence and culture.

My mother explained the racial turmoil to me and made me read the newspapers and magazines about it.

I read about Brown v the Board of Education, Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Woolworth Sit-ins, Freedom Riders and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So, I knew about Dr. King, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott "stirring up all kinds of trouble for the white people down South," my mother said, smiling and handing me a magazine with the story and pictures. 

"Read this," my mother said. "And learn what your people are doing. They are going to make it possible for you to go to that big white college out there on the outskirts of town. But you must be prepared with good grades and we have to be prepared to pay for it. But no matter what it takes, you have to get an education!" 

In 1963, my family and I watched the news coverage of Dr. King's I Have a Dream Speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington in Washington DC. I had wanted to go, but the march occurred just after my 13th birthday and no one I knew wanted to make that trip and, at the time we had no relatives living in Washington. But I was glued to the news coverage and felt the pulse of the crowds and hung on to all the speeches our TV station allowed to be aired.

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My mother had relatives and friends nationwide, including the Deep South, but I was never sent down south in summer or any other time. What the Deep South had to teach me, I had already learned. Eastern, Northern or Western United States were my destinations, although those regions had their racial problems, too. I questioned her about racism and she said it is a very personal feeling and only the person can answer for himself or herself. "All I can say is," she said, "That you can waste time worrying and doing nothing about something you cannot change or you can get on with trying to do something about it like Rosa Parks and Dr. King, Go to college. Show that you are smart. Do something with your life!"

MY SEGREGATED EDUCATION and my mother's homework assistance and extra reading assignments prepared me to qualify for entrance and graduation from Texas A&M University, where I was among the first women to earn an undergraduate degree and the first African American to earn a degree in journalism and broadcasting. To honor the achievements of black students in Texas A&M history, the Cushing Library compiled In Fulfillment of a Dream, an exhibition chronicling the presence of African Americans at Texas A&M University. which includes my scholarly portrait. The Cushing Library also included me in another of its exhibition, Intended for All: 125 Years of Women at Texas A&M.

Texas A&M University
College Station

Texas A&M University was established in 1876 in Brazos County under the Justin Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862.

Texas A&M University College Station in began as an all-male, all-white military college of fewer than 100 students when classes first began with primary emphasis on  agricultural and industrial training. When I was growing up and had no idea I would ever go to that school, the enrollment was under 5,000. During the intervening years, Texas A&M went from small, military college to a premier co-educational research university with an enrollment of more than 50,000.

My mother lived to see me fulfill some of her dreams for me--music career; graduation from Texas A&M University; syndicated columnist; national publications; international recognition as a writer and photographer; contributions to hundreds of literary collections and journals; collection by hundreds of libraries and museums around the world; writing, photography and production awards; radio and television positions; published author; and speaking at our state capitol and a  Presidential Library.

Sunny Nash
Wins 2004 Award
Producer of the Year

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash is the author of Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press), about life in the Brazos Valley with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement. Nash’s book is recognized by the Association of American University Presses as essential for understanding U.S. race relations; listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York; and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida. 

Sunny Nash--author, producer, photographer and leading writer on U.S. race relations in--writes books, blogs, articles and reviews, and produces media and images on U.S. history and contemporary American topics, ranging from Jim Crow laws to social media networking, Nash uses her book to write articles and blogs on race relations in America through topics relating to her life--from music, film, early radio and television, entertainment, social media, Internet technology, publishing, journalism, sports, education, employment, the military, fashion, performing arts, literature, women's issues, adolescence and childhood, equal rights, social and political movements--past and present—to today's post-racism.

 

© 2012 Sunny Nash

All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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Ann Richards - Keynote of the Twentieth Century

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Ann Richards, known as the Thorny Rose of Texas, overcame the Jim Crow attitudes of her era, the 'Good Old Boy' network and addiction, and became Governor of Texas, the second female to hold that office.

Thorny Rose of Texas:
An Intimate Portrait
of Governor Ann Richards

“I've been tested by fire, and the fire lost,” said the late Ann Richards, second female Governor of Texas (1990-94), The Thorny Rose of Texas. However, unlike many of today's celebrities and politicians who suffer debilitating addictions and distasteful habits, Ann Richards accepted personal accountability for her condition, actions within the condition, and treatment for the condition. Most of all, Ann Richards accepted being a role model to those who may have been looking up to her for direction in their own lives. “I believe in recovery,” Ann said. “And I believe that as a role model I have the responsibility to let young people know that you can make a mistake and come back from it.”

Thorny Rose of Texas: An Intimate Portrait of Governor Ann Richards (Carol Publishing  Corporation) by Mike Shropshire and Frank Schaeffer, is a biography of Dorothy Ann Willis Richards, covering her personal  and political life. Ann was born in 1933 in poverty during the Depression on a rural farm outside of Lakeview, Texas, current population 100, located 35 miles north of Waco. She said, “I believe Mama would have liked to have had more children, but times were hard and I was the only one. Daddy had the fear--maybe that fear is indigenous to the Depression generation--that he wouldn't be able to afford all the things he wanted to give me, and he wanted to give me everything he'd never had. So they never had another child.”

TWO AND A HALF MEN:COMP SECOND
 SEASON BY TWO AND A HALF MEN
(DVD) [8 D (Google Affiliate Ad)

Ann Richards, more than a mere politician, is being introduced to a younger generation of Americans as a national treasure by 68-year-old Holland Taylor--most recently known as the mother of the characters played by Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer, and the cougar lover of the character played by Ashton Kutcher, on CBS' Two and a Half Men. Taylor is taking time off from the popular televisions show to pay tribute to the late Ann Richards in a one-woman play, ANN: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards, which Holland wrote, produced and stars in. The play was sold out in Austin, San Antionio and Galveston, and was so successful in Chicago, that the production will be traveling to the Kennedy Center in Washington DC this month and moving on to Broadway in New York City in the Spring.

Buy & Review
Texas Through Women's Eyes

In addition to theatrical tributes, Ann Richards' contributions to women's history in America and the history of Texas are also featured in Texas Through Women's Eyes: The Twentieth Century Experience (University of Texas Press) by award-wining historians, Judith N. McArthur and Harold L. Smith, both professors at the University of Houston, Victoria. McArthur and Smith’s book won the Texas State Historical Association’s Carpenter Award for Research in the History of Women.

Using data from their own original research into women's lives and information from published histories, McArthur and Smith pay special attention to the relationships between men and women in the eras of their investigation; explore the hierarchies of race and ethnicity; and include first-person accounts from women's letters, memoirs and oral histories. My book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, is also featured in this distinguished volume. 

Ann Richards is most noted for her Keynote Speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Dorothy Ann Willis 

High School Debate Club 

A star high school debater in Lakeview, Ann earned a scholarship to Baylor University in Waco, down the highway from home. “I have always had the feeling I could do anything and my dad told me I could," Ann said. "I was in college before I found out he might be wrong. In 1950, when Ann graduated from college, she and other women with professional ambitions faced the 'good old boy' network, firmly in place throughout the nation, and found doors closed to them. 

There were few choices for women at the time--volunteer in the political or other arena, teach school, marry and have children or make some combination of that. I write about Jim Crow laws, which affected every aspect of society, including women like Ann Richards, who mothered a state as its second female governor. Ann received a teaching credential from the University of Texas at Austin in 1955 and took a social studies and history position at Fulmore Jr. High School in Austin. Ann said, “Teaching was the hardest work I had ever done, and it remains the hardest work I have done to date.” Ann was teaching during the Jim Crow period, in which Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were making history in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Although Ann Richards' life was influenced by some of the most tumultuous periods in American history, she did not wear her feelings on her sleeve. We must remember this was mid-1950s in the Jim Crow South. Everyone had to be careful about what they said, especially in the classroom, where Ann was making her living at the time. Even my black social studies teachers during the 1950s and '60s guarded their feelings in the classroom about the Civil Rights Movement and the so-called trouble makers from up North.

For fear of being reported by faculty spies and losing their jobs, teachers hid their opinions because this was a period that labeled of people as Communists if they held certain views and belonged to organizations, like the NAACP, other civil rights groups and some churches. Rosa Parks, who started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was a known member of the NAACP and was booked and charged with the crime of not obeying Jim Crow laws and for igniting a civil protest against those laws. After volunteering on several successful political campaigns, Ann decided to run for an elected office herself. She won the local race for Travis County Commissioner in 1976. In 1982, Ann decided to run for a state-wide office and won the Texas State Treasurer's race. She ran for re-election in 1986 and again she won Treasurer.

With grit, Ann stepped onto the national stage at the Democratic Convention on July 19, 1988, in Atlanta, Georgia. As keynote speaker, she made remarks on then Republican presidential candidate, George Herbert Walker Bush. She said, "Poor George. He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Ann brought down the house, making Republican enemies including, George W. Bush, the son of the presidential candidate she impaled with her prime-time national insult. Oh, she was just having a little fun some of her supporters said, at what she thought was Mr. Bush’s expense, but would end up being at her own expense later in her political career.

I liked Ann Richards. She said what the rest of us sat quietly thinking and pretending to be too polite to say aloud. If you didn't agree with what or how she said it, she was still your friend and didn't vilify anyone who disagreed with her on issues, at least, that's how I saw her--honest and in your face. Ann had the tone of a female 'good old boy,' which is the kind of character needed to participate in anything Texan, whether the participant is male or female, white or person of color. Ann, though, had the sincere desire to extend opportunity to those who were traditionally without power. That's just how she was. 

Lee Roy Young 1988
First Black Texas Ranger

In 1990, Ann won Governor of Texas and wanted more black and female officers appointed to the Texas Rangers, the second oldest law enforcement agency in the United States, carrying its name long before the baseball team once owned by former President George W. Bush before he was Governor.

Texas Rangers: Legendary Lawmen
 by Spradlin, Michael P./ Munro, Roxie
 (Google Affiliate Ad)

The Texas Rangers law enforcement organization dates back to 1820 when the Mexican Government permitted 300 families to settle in Texas. In 1823, 10 men from the Texas settlement were officially hired to ride the ranges and protect the frontier. Since 1935, the Texas Ranger organization has been part of the Texas Department of Public Safety. In 1988, Lee Roy Young was the first Texas Ranger of color--African American and Seminole ancestry--to be appointed as a Texas Ranger in the group's 165-year history. 

Ann Richards
Second Female
Texas Governor

Ann Richards was not the first female Governor of Texas, however. The first female Governor of Texas was Miriam ’Ma’ Ferguson, who ran for her husband’s gubernatorial seat after his impeachment in 1924. The Ferguson’s had their issues, as well. Although Miriam had been born and raised in wealth, her husband, Governor Jim Ferguson had been what some called a gold digger when he married her. When they were thrown out of the governor's mansion, the couple had to raise chickens and sell butter to make ends meet before Miriam won the governor's seat with the slogan, "Two for the Price of One."

Miriam Ferguson
First Female
Texas Governor
Miriam Ferguson Books

My father met Miriam “Ma” Ferguson. He was nine years old when ‘Ma’ Ferguson brought her campaign and dog and pony show, as my father called it, to his church near Edge, Texas, not far from our family farm. In my grandparents' mule-drawn wagon, my father brought neighbor ladies, dressed in their Sunday best, to the black church where Ferguson was to speak to an integrated audience. Back then, black people were not allowed to enter a white church, so the white community members came to the black church to see her. It was Miriam's idea because her schedule was too tight to make two separate appearances. 

My father told me there was no way “Ma” Ferguson was getting a vote in our community. Everybody out in that part of Texas, black and white, voted Republican. But everyone out there wanted to see the "Ma" Ferguson Show, predicted to be better than the traveling Medicine Man Show.

Governor Ann Richards
Texas Monthly Magazine

Ann spent more money and lost the governor's race to the newcomer, George W. Bush in 1994. Some say he ran against her to retaliate for the disparaging remarks she made about his father at the 1988 Convention. Whatever his reasons for challenging Richards, he was determined to more than make a mere showing. Ann let some people in her camp convince her that she was so popular in Texas she would crush Bush with little effort. 

While riding a wave of popularity of her own and chairing the Democratic National Convention in 1992, the Convention that selected Bill Clinton, Ann lost sight of the real threat Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush by Ivins, (Google Affiliate Ad) posed to her gubernatorial candidacy. And we all know where it all led the nation. Because George W. Bush decided to make a run for president, he left his Governor's seat to be filled by the then Texas Lieutenant Governor, Rick Perry, who has held onto that seat for more than a decade and has tried to trade up like his predecessor. Ann Richards may not have realized something about Bush that the world has since learned. Bush didn't let people get away with insulting his father. Getting back at them became his passion, whether the insult was perceived or real. “I've always said that in politics," Ann said. "Your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you.” And that is exactly what happened. Her friends underestimated her opponent. 

I'm sad Ann is gone. I still miss her; I will always miss her. Ann Richards may have been compared to a thorny rose but she is a role model, who took on the responsibility with enthusiasm, honor and grace. I hope that I am able to contribute even a fraction of what she gave to society in her lifetime. Keep up with Texas news with a Texas Monthly Subscription.

© 2011 Sunny Nash

All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's

 by Sunny Nash

African American
 National Biography
Harvard & Oxford

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press) by Sunny Nash was chosen by the  Association of American University Presses as one of its essential books for understanding race relations in the United States, and also listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center in New York and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida.

Sunny Nash has work in the African American National Biography, a joint project by Harvard and Oxford, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham; African American West, a Century of Short Stories; Reflections in Black, a History of Black Photographers 1840 - Present; Ancestry; Companion to Southern Literature; Texas Through Women’s Eyes; Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy; African American Foodways L; Southwestern American Literature Journal and other anthologies. Nash is listed in references: The Source: guidebook to American genealogy; Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies; Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics; Ebony Magazine; Southern Exposure; Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places; and others.

Robin Fruble of Southern California said, “Every white person in America should read this book (Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s)! Sunny Nash writes the story of her childhood without preaching or ranting but she made me realize for the first time just how much skin color changes how one experiences the world. But, if your skin color is brown, it matters a great deal to a great number of people. I needed to learn that. Sunny Nash is a great teacher,” Fruble said.

Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott & Jim Crow

Rosa Parks challenged Jim Crow laws igniting the Montgomery Bus Boycott when she refused to give up her seat to another bus rider. Article includes photographs, newspaper accounts, television newsreels and legal documents.

Rosa Parks - Life Behind the Legend

Rosa Parks started the Montgomery Bus Boycott to free Alabama citizens of segregated bus seating and to show the nation how to overcome the tragedy that slavery left behind.

Race Relations in America, the Woolworth’s Sit-ins

Woolworth's sit-ins by black and white college students in Greensboro NC between February and July 1960 ended segregated lunch counters across the nation.

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