Did you know that a whole century before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, leading to a lengthy boycott and the desegregation of Montgomery public transportation, a Black woman named Elizabeth Jennings got public transportation integrated in New York? On a hot summer day Jennings, a teacher and musician, needed to take a trolley to her church for choir practice. When one pulled up the conductor refused to let her on. In fact he and the driver got physically abusive. She ended up injured and limping home. I bet both men thought they'd defeated her….
... If they did they were very mistaken. When she got home Jennings wrote a statement about what had happened and gave it to her father who spread word of the outrageous incident. A newspaper printed her account. A newly minted white lawyer, Chester Arthur, who later in life would become President, took her case. And the good guys won.
Amy Hill Hearth didn't think it was fair that Jennings was forgotten while Parks was famous. She extensively researched and wrote Streetcar to Justice to remedy this situation.
What I like best about the book is its plethora of drawings and period photographs that let younger readers see for themselves what New York was like a century and a half ago. What I'm not so wild about is the overabundance of sidebars which I think might be a little confusing for them. That is the only flaw in a story eminently worth telling and reading.
On a purrrsonal note, yesterday I gave myself a snow day to concentrate on end of the semester papers, The weather would have made bus commuting dangerous. I got quite a lot accomplished. I'm quite caught up and even a little ahead. Tomorrow, despite the fact that as of yesterday we're officially in spring, the meteorologists say we're going to experience another winter wonderland. That's Maine for you.
A great big shout out goes out to my husband, Eugene, and all the other blizzard battlers.
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