JOURNAL ASSIGNMENTS Read the assigned pages. As you finish each reading, make a journal entry. Your journal may contain artwork, poetry, short stories, newspaper editorials, letters, speeches, audio or video tapes,

anything you wish. Most of you will use a diary format that is, writing down your personal reactions to what you read. The point is to show me that you have read the assignments and thought about the significance of what you have read. You MUST include: --How the document relates to lectures --The significance of the document --Your reaction to what you read --A quote from the document-include the most significant quote from the document and WHY you think it is significant If your journal is in the standard diary format, it should be about EIGHT double- spaced, typed pages long, in standard (not oversized) typeface and with ONE- inch margins. If you are using some other format, or a mixture, use your judgment concerning length/amount. See me if you have questions. **IMPORTANT***. DO NOT MERELY SUMMARIZE WHAT YOU HAVE READ!!!!! SUMMARIES WILL EARN YOU NO BETTER THAN A "C." Late journals, unless arrangements have been made with me, will cost you points. Other issues to think about as you read: --If you had been alive at this time, what would have been your reaction? Would your opinion be different if these events occurred today? Why? --What surprised/shocked/upset you the most? Why? --Is this source important to historians? Why or why not? --Are there other sources that should have been included in the assignment? Why? --What is the writer's agenda (goal)? Do you think he/she was successful? --Who would have agreed with this writer? Why? --Who would have disagreed with this writer? Why? --What impact, if any, did this event (letter, law, etc...) have? --How might the events have turned out differently? --How have your impressions and views changed?/n 524 Eyewitness to America ● blue blazes within the tired sanctums of the barnish auditorium, but the hillbilly fans turned out in droves and seemed oblivious to the heat. . . . The whole shebang seemed like a cross between the enthu- siasm displayed at a wrestling match and old-fashioned camp meet- ing. . . . This was my first tangle with a hillbilly jamboree, a poignant contrast to Metropolitan Opera in Atlanta, I must say. I was awed and with all due respect to opera in Atlanta, I got a tremendous boot out of this loud, uninhibited music that's sending the country crazy. . . . Ferron [Faron] Young was real sharp singing that ditty about living fast, loving hard, dying young and leaving a beautiful memory, but what really stole the show was this 20-year-old sensation, Elvis Pres- ley, a real sex box as far as the teenage girls are concerned. They squealed themselves silly over this fellow in orange coat and side- burns who "sent" them with his unique arrangement of "Shake, Rat- tle and Roll." And following the program, Elvis was surrounded by girlies asking for autographs. He would give each a long, slow look with drooped eyelids and comply. They ate it up. "The only tired I was, was tired of giving in." THE FRONT OF THE BUS December 1, 1955 Montgomery, Alabama ROSA PARKS 66 law black in I more than bus segregation," Rosa Parks recalled years after this incident, which sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. The two-thirds of the city bus rid- ers who were African Americans were forced to endure humiliating rules, including a requirement that they sit in the back of the bus. Bus drivers, who carried guns, had police power to enforce the regulations. When a local NAACP official requested a change in one of the rules, he was told, "Your folks started it. They do it because they want to." m, but to the nthu- neet- mant and out ving but es- ev le- it- Eyewitness to America 525 Parks was secretary of the local chapter of the NAACP at the time. She has often been described as merely a seamstress who was too tired to move. That poignant version belies the college-educated Parks's long history as a knowl- edgeable, committed activist. It also ignores the stand she had taken twelve years earlier, in 1943, when a bus driver told her to move to the back. She refused, and the driver forced her off the bus. After avoiding that driver for more than a decade, she found herself on his bus once again. This time she was prepared to see the confrontation through to its end. The boycott lasted more than a year. The bus company lost two-thirds of its income, and caved in. The action also brought national attention to its leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In December 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation is illegal. The bus driver who forced Parks off the bus in 1943 and 1955 remained in his job until 1972, when he retired. When I got off from work that evening of December 1, I went to Court Square as usual to catch the Cleveland Avenue bus home. I didn't look to see who was driving when I got on, and by the time I recognized him, I had already paid my fare. It was the same driver who had put me off the bus back in 1943, twelve was still tall and heavy, with red, rough-looking skin. And he was still mean-looking. I didn't know if he had been on that route before- they switched the drivers around sometimes. I do know that most of the time if I saw him on a bus, I wouldn't get on it. years earlier. He I saw a vacant seat in the middle section of the bus and took it. I didn't even question why there was a vacant seat even though there were quite a few people standing in the back. If I had thought about it at all, I would probably have figured maybe someone saw me get on and did not take the seat but left it vacant for me. There was a man sitting next to the window and two women across the aisle. The next stop was the Empire Theater, and some whites got on. They filled up the white seats, and one man was left standing. The driver looked back and noticed the man standing. Then he looked back at us. He said, “Let me have those front seats," because they were the front seats of the black section. Didn't anybody move. We just sat right where we were, the four of us. Then he spoke a second 526 Eyewitness to America time: "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." The man in the window seat next to me stood up, and I moved to let him pass by me, and then I looked across the aisle and saw that the two women were also standing. I moved over to the window seat. I could not see how standing up was going to "make it light" for me. The more we gave in and complied, the worse they treated us. his I thought back to the time when I used to sit up all night and didn't sleep, and my grandfather would have his gun right by the fire- place, or if he had his one-horse wagon going anywhere, he always had gun in the back of the wagon. People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired phys- ically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. The driver of the bus saw me still sitting there, and he asked was I going to stand up. I said, "No." He said, "Well, I'm going to have you arrested." Then I said, "You may do that." These were the only words we said to each other. I didn't even know his name, which was James Blake, until we were in court together. He got out of the bus and stayed outside for a few minutes, waiting for the police. As I sat there, I tried not to think about what might happen. I knew that anything was possible. I could be manhandled or beaten. I could be arrested People have asked me if it occurred to me then that I could be the test case the NAACP had been looking for. I did not think about that at all. In fact if I had let myself think too deeply about what might happen to me, I might have gotten off the bus. But I chose to remain. Meanwhile there were people getting off the bus and asking for transfers, so that began to loosen up the crowd, especially in the back of the bus. Not everyone got off, but everybody was very quiet. What conversation there was, was in low tones; no one was talking out loud. It would have been quite interesting to have seen the whole bus the three had stayed where they were, because empty out. Or if they'd had to arrest four of us instead of one, then that would have given me a little support. But it didn't matter. I never thought hard of them at all and never even bothered to criticize them. we those oved to that the seat. I r me. it and fire- shad hvs- in. as I ou les W d Eyewitness to America 527 Eventually two policemen came. They got on the bus, and one of them asked me why I didn't stand up. I asked him,"Why do all you push us around?" He said to me, and I quote him exactly, "I don't know, but the law is the law and you're under arrest.” "They are in our school. Oh God..." FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL IN LITTLE ROCK September 23, 1957 Arkansas RELMAN MORIN he U.S. Supreme Court had ordered the Little Rock school system desegre- gated, but a riot erupted when nine young students arrived to attend the first day of classes. The President Eisenhower sent one thousand army paratroopers to Little Rock the next day to keep the peace and enforce the Supreme Court decision. But similar incidents occurred elsewhere. A few years later, Governor George Wal- lace personally tried to block the path of the first black students to attend the University of Alabama. Federal troops had to escort the students inside. Morin, an Associated Press reporter, won a Pulitzer Prize for this second- by-second account of the first day's riot. It was exactly like an explosion, a human explosion. At 8:35 A.M., the people standing in front of the high school looked like the ones you see every day in a shopping center. A pretty, sweet-faced woman with auburn hair and a jewel-green jacket.. another, holding a white portable radio in her ear. “I'm getting the news of what's going on at the high school,” she said. . . . People laughed. A greyhaired man, tall and spare, leaned over the wooden barricade. "If they're coming," he said, quietly, “they'll be here soon." . . "They better," said another. "I got to get to work."/n