To Buy The Sun Play Analysis

The setting is a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The event happened in1955. The characters are Mr. Joe Singleton,, Rev. Scott, Miss Louise Bennett, Jacob & Junie ( fraternal twins, fourteen) and Mrs. Rosa Parks, a seamstress, a symbol of knitting the difficult with the beautiful; intertwining a private experience with a history of racism and injustice. As a seamstress, she is represented by these words: “fabric, thread, collars, hems, buttonholes; bias, pins, cut; pieced & sewn; stitch, pants, shirts, socks and shirts, darned; well-made, well-sewn clothes; pressed sleeve; a thimble ( a symbol if protection), hem, … pins, parted lips, stitch, clenched teeth”. The bus and the door are symbolic; both are referential to the segregation practices exercised everywhere. The driver “drives off”, “pulls off” and “puts off. The door is “open” to the white and colored riders; however, colored people, who are paid-in-full-customers, are denied equal access to the bus. Verbs such as: “get off”, “walk”, “reboard”, “push” and “repeat”

I read The Back of the Bus, by Mary Mebane. In this essay Mebane tells us about a real life situation that she witnessed as a young girl. The situation occurred in the 1940's, while segregation was almost at it's worst. Mebane talks about the tension between the people on the bus when a white man got on and there was only one seat left, next to a black man. During all the tension the bus driver tried to tell the black man to move but, as he did a black woman stood up fighting for the black man and his seat. The bus driver realized they were at the last stop and let the situation go, as if nothing happened. I believe that the black man shouldn't have had to move but for his sake, he should have moved so he wouldn't have had to face the harsh

The movie shows the hardship and struggles of the black children and adults who are just trying to live their life in a disrespectful, uncaring white society. The movie has many scenes that show how blacks were treated by others, some scenes were more intense in showing racism than others. Some scenes are less graphic but racism was still obvious. An example of this is the way that other white coaches would talk to each other about Texas Western and insult them just because they were different from other college basketball teams at this time. There was one scene where the team was on the road traveling and they stopped for dinner one night at a restaurant. Before the basketball team enters the restaurant, people in the restaurant were talking badly about the team and giving them dirty looks simply because of their skin color. In some scenes, racism was also shown in more intense ways. An example of this is when the team stopped at a restaurant to get some food and get ready for the game. One of the players left the team to use the bathroom. While the player was in the restroom, that player was ganged up on by two or three white men and the player was assaulted and beat up very badly. The events and blatant racism really took its toll on the team. After some of these

Mrs. Parks entered the bus, paid her fare, and took a seat in the middle section of the bus. The back of the bus was deemed the "colored section", the front was considered the "white section", and the middle section was for either race, however if a white person needed a seat, the black person was expected to give up their seat immediately. The bus made three stops a white man entered the bus and needed a seat, the three other black got out of their seat immediately, but when the driver ordered Rosa to get up she firmly stated "no", Mrs. Parks once stated that "people always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired of giving in." According to "Rosa Parks", Mrs. Parks had meant to do no more than show one rude bus driver that blacks were being treated unfairly. She wasn't the first black to ever refuse to give up her seat, but her action had consequences. After she refused to give up her seat on the bus, the driver threatened to have her arrested, Mrs. Parks simply stated, "You may do that." The policemen clearly didn't want to arrest her, but law forced them to.

Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks were inspirational leaders that contributed greatly towards the civil rights movement. With racial discrimination surrounding King and Park, growing up as an African American made it hard and colored people were unfairly treated. Both King and Park knew the inequalities and sought education to aid themselves in their unfair life. Despite this, Park and King were brought up responsibly by their parents, King was an active civil rights activist, participating in the ‘Montgomery Bus Boycott’, ‘March on Washington’ and lead the ‘Selma to Montgomery march’. Rosa Parks was an influential figure contributing to the civil rights movement as she was the chosen ‘test case’ the NCAACP were looking for.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, one of the leaders of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] refused to give up her seat to a white person on a segregated city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, despite being reprimanded by the driver (Schulke 166). Montgomery, Alabama was known for its terrible treatment of blacks. The buses in particular had been a source of tension between the city and black citizens for many years (Schulke, 167). As a result of refusing to give up her seat, Rosa Parks was arrested. Rosa Parks' popularity among the black community, proved to be the spark that ignited the non-violent Civil Rights Movement (Norrell 2).

Like the play, much of the action takes place in Troy and Rose’s backyard, where Troy works to build the long-promised fence around Rose’s property, a fence meant to keep Rose’s family “in,” a symbolic protection of the freedom the family has come to enjoy. The thrust of the action follows Troy’s breakneck monologs, each describing the racism he’s had to overcome as a black man who has done time, played in the Negro baseball league, and then not made it into the still predominantly white pros. Yet, Troy’s inability to see that times are changing for “the negro” only lead to the movie's major conflicts; he cheats on his wife and father’s a daughter out of wedlock because he wants “a different understanding of [him]self” and wants to “get away from the pressures and problems” he has faced in his life (Wilson, pg. 1391, 1985). Simultaneously, he undermines his gifted sons (played by Russell Hornsby and Jovan Adepo), incapable of understanding the opportunities the post-Brown v. Board world affords them, opportunities never offered to him. In short, the narrative maintains Wilson’s pragmatic realism and confronts the diametrically opposed definitions facing black men and women in the world today.

The origin of this novel stems from a time with great attitude changes within the African-American way of life. Tensions between gender specifically had begun to emerge, women, who were thought of as subservient, belonging to the house as well as to their husbands. During the timeframe of this story, women had been beginning to emerge with dignity, grace, and authority. The play takes place in Pittsburgh, during the 1950’s when the gap between genders had been shrinking, as women had been introduced further into society as more than just mothers. To most, this diminishing gap, to most would be a seamless concept, however, to the characters of this play would be a deciding factor for many conflicting scenes. The main characters of this play

After about five blocks, the driver, a white man, turned in his seat and ordered Jackie to move to the back of the bus. Robinson refused. The driver threatened to make trouble for him when the bus reached the station, but Jackie wouldn’t budge.

A growing amount of American people began to speak out about inequality and injustice during the 1950’s and the Rosa Parks bus incident is a perfect example. On December 1, 1955, a 42 year old African American woman who worked as a seamstress

Standing up for yourself as an African-American during that time was a very rare and risky thing, especially if you were a woman. Ruby had only one teacher in a one student classroom because nobody wanted to teach her, they thought she was a waste of breath, time, energy and life. The principal didn't want

I surely do not know the author’s thesis on civil rights, I just understand that he knows Rosa Park's thesis and view on civil rights and how she contributed to creating them. The author tells the reader how Rosa Parks was always modest about her role in the civil rights movement, giving credit to a higher power for her decision not to give up her seat. the author ends with Rosa Park quoting, “I was fortunate God provided me with the strength needed at the precise time conditions were ripe for change. I am thankful to him every day that he gave me the strength not to move.” An article in the New York Times explains that: For Rosa Parks, her decision not to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery Alabama, bus on Dec. 1, 1955 wasn't the first time the seamstress had chosen not to give in. They also explain how Parks had been an active member of the local NAACP chapter since 1943 and how they had marched on behalf of the Scottsboro boys, who were arrested in Alabama in 1931 for raping two white women. It goes on to say with a simple act of refusal, a move which landed Parks in prison, a motion like the Montgomery Bus Boycott who set off to start the Civil Rights Movement. They end the article by saying when the bulldogs and water hoses were unleashed a decade later, in the streets of

Theoharis expresses the main misconception of Rosa Parks in the sentence, “In textbooks and documentaries, she is the meek seamstress gazing quietly out of a bus window…” The phrase, “meek seamstress gazing quietly,” conveys the soft-spoken, introverted, and standoffish persona that media assigns to Rosa Parks’ legacy. Theoharis challenged that persona and further advanced her argument by using vocabulary with stronger connotations. For example, Theoharis refers to Rosa Parks as, “a lifelong activist who had been challenging white supremacy for decades before she became the famous catalyst for the Montgomery bus boycott.” In fact, Theoharis refers to Parks as, “being a rebel.” The phrases “lifelong activist,” “famous catalyst,” and “rebel,” further indicates Parks’ commitment, determination, initiative, and assertiveness throughout her lifetime and the Civil Rights

Allusion is one of the main literary devices used to portray the theme that resistance engenders eventual change. John Legend and Common alluded to other peaceful demonstrations that have called attention to social issues, that have slowly been resolved due to resistance of unfair treatment. The first example can be found in the lyric, “That’s why Rosa sat on the bus”(line 17) is referring to the resistance of blacks. Rosa Parks is one of the most renowned civil rights activist, she refused to render her bus seat to a white male in 1955. During her resistance, she remained peaceful. She did not fight the white male, nor did she fight the white law enforcement officers when they forcibly removed her from the bus. Therefore, due to Rosa Park’s peaceful resistance, in 1956 buses were desegregated. By not following unjust laws of society, Rosa’s resistance was able to enact change. The second allusion references a more recent protest; the protest in Ferguson, Missouri in which a black, unarmed teenager was killed by a white law

To explain the movie plot, we must remember that the film takes place in the south during the Civil Rights era. In the