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Discussion Post on “The Back of the Bus” by May Mebane
A) First two paragraphs of “The Back of the Bus” introduce the story by describing in which era Mebane was living in and how it impacted her life. In the first paragraph, she tells that in 1954, “when Supreme Court outlawed segregation in the public schools,” she was twenty-one and later “when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964”, she was thirty-one (Mebane 149). The author set the historical context by stating the historical value of her time since she belongs to the generation which has witnessed the time before and after the segregation. In the second paragraph, she describes the “psychological terror of segregation, in which there was a special set of laws governing your movements” (Mebane 149). The author set the emotional context by describing how the segregation law entailed a psychological terror in the blacks. She describes that in those days, any person dared to violate the law at own risk because in such case “physical terror was just around the corner” (Mebane 149). She elaborates that this physical terror was “in the form of policemen and jails, and in some cases and places white vigilante mobs formed for the exclusive purpose of keeping blacks in line” (Mebane 149). This description set the tone of the story, and the readers get that the story is concerning her experience regarding this terror.
B. Uncle Nick’s wedding is less memorable …