For 'BLACK HISTORY' month...

freedom in a simple word, “NO”

{On December 1, 1955 ROSA PARKS of Montgomery, Alabama said “NO” to a municipal bus driver ordering her to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus. ROSA PARKS for her refusal - was arrested and fined. So began the modern CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.}

A local bus is a ‘strange’ place to proclaim freedom.
Amid the old worn vinyl seats
witness to so many work-a-day worlds.
A mother founded a modern movement
with the word “NO” said in adamant defiance,
of local law and at the time
‘White men’who supervised the law and its enforcement.
A Black seamstress utters the simple word “NO” -
she will not ‘give-up’ her seat for some other White passenger.
ROSA PARKS refuses to obey the instructions of that bus driver.
And the word “NO” ripples and spreads
like waves of movement that will engulf
us all with a new found respect for those
separated by race.
Before the word “NO” was spoken equality was denied innocuously – without protest.
A public transit bus so alien a place to proclaim ‘freedom’
Segregated among the ‘throw-aways’
discarded gum, wrappers, dreams of people'
from a work-a-day world.
A Black seamstress puts her stitch in the AMERICAN quilt.
Simply – profoundly – irrevocably with the word “NO."