Similarities

Poetry: Rita & John

I’m sharing two poems, the second written by John Scarborough that he recently brought to Louth Writer’s Group (ably led by Christopher Sanderson) in response to Rita Dove’s 1999 poem about Rosa Parkes (4.2.1913–24.10.2005)

On December 1,1955, in Montgomerey, Alabama, Rosa rejected the bus driver’s order to relinquish her seat in the “colored section” to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled. Rosa was not the first person to resist bus segregation but, fired from her job and receiving death threats for years afterwards, she…