Love Notes

by Bill Love

May 17, 2004, marked the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education by the Supreme Court, which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. Brown v. Board abolished the legal precedent of separate but equal.

At the time of Brown v. Board, I was living in Montgomery, Alabama. I was in the first grade. I had missed the starting date for public school. My birthday came six days too late.

My parents discussed it and decided that I was ready to start school and found a private school I could attend. It was taught by a woman in the basement of her home with several grades in the same room. She taught us to spell phonetically, for which I am grateful.

To get to school, I rode the city bus. My father rode the bus with me so that I could learn where to get off in the morning and on in the afternoon. He talked with the drivers so they would know me and I would know them. I learned which bus to catch if I missed the one I was supposed to ride. The number 4 bus was the Capitol Heights bus. That was my bus. But the number 5 bus, the Bradley Drive bus, had a similar route and would drop me off at the same place, half a block from home. It was also a time that parents felt confident children would be safe.

After the newness and excitement of being so grown up that I rode the bus by myself wore off, I began to notice other things around me. Among the things I noticed was the sign at the front of the bus that required separation of the races.

The way the Montgomery City Code read was: Every person operating a bus line in the city shall provide equal but separate accommodations for white people and negroes on his buses, by requiring the employees thereof to assign seats on the vehicles under their charge in such a manner as to separate the white people from the negroes, where there are both white and negroes on the same car; provided, however, that negro nurses having in charge white children or sick or infirm white persons may be assigned seats among white people. [Montgomery City Code, C. 6, ' 10; Code 1938, '' 603, 606]

I remember the sign as saying: Coloreds to the rear. I looked at the sign, and I looked at the back of the bus to try to figure out what the big deal was. The only thing I could figure out was that it must be really neat to sit in the back of the bus, since I wasn’t allowed to do it and kids don’t get to do really neat stuff.

One day, I sat in the back of the bus. The bus didn’t move. The driver came back and told me the bus wouldn’t move until I moved to the front of the bus. My co-dependent mother had taught me to please adults, so I moved to the front of the bus, but I didn’t like it.

A couple of years later, during the bus boycott, I asked Mother what a boycott was. As she explained it, I realized that, if it were successful, I would be able to sit in the back of the bus. So I grew up with Martin Luther King, Jr., as a hero because he was going to fix it so I could sit in the back of the bus. (I had other heroes as well. I have since learned that the face on the dime is FDR. As a child, I thought it was Gene Autry.)

As I have reflected on that experience on the bus, I have come to a couple of realizations that I have carried with me since. The first is that, when we try to fence someone else out, the only thing we can be sure of is fencing ourselves in. It seems to me that fear underlies much of that desire, and the Bible tells me that perfect love casts out fear.

The second is that the way we treat the people we meet in life is the way we treat Christ, no better, no worse. (Matthew 25, Romans 15:7, Galatians 3:28, for example.)

For years after, I would always sit in the back of the bus. It isn’t a really neat place to sit, but I like knowing I can and that nobody has to.

Bill Love is an Interim Ministry Specialist.