social justice | Rosanne Parry

One of my favorite parts of researching a historical fiction is finding books that will be a perfect partner for my work-in-progress. Books that illuminate an era near to the one in my story or books that explore the same events from a different lens. I am always grateful when my publisher makes room in the back of the book to recommend these book partners. The author notes in LAST OF THE NAME point to several books by Zetta Elliot, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Walter Dean Myers.

Sometimes a book comes along too late to be included but is nevertheless a perfect companion read. Streetcar to Justice: how Elizabeth Jennings won the right to ride in New York, by Amy Hill Hearth came out last year. It is non-fiction, set in New York city a mere ten years before the setting of Last of the Name. And it illuminates a little known bit of history.

Nearly everyone knows Rosa Parks but did you know that more than 100 years before the Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, a woman named Elizabeth Jennings won the right in court for a black person to ride the public trolley in New York City. Hill’s well documented book is chock full of photographs which illuminate the condition of the streets of New York in the pre-Civil War era.

So many of the difficult racial, ethnic, and class issues we are facing today had their roots more than a hundred years ago. I hope both these books spark conversation and reflection on how we got to this moment, and inspire readers to move forward with ever greater understanding and compassion.

I am writing this post in the waning hour of Inauguration Day, in anticipation of the Women’s March in the morning. I do not know what tomorrow will bring, but I have hope. My neighbor, the noted poet and beloved teacher Kim Stafford, wrote a slim and wise volume of poetry in honor of the times, and I was particularly moved by this poem.

Presidential Citizens

When four guards led Nelson Mandela

first into the prison yard in chains,

he set the pace, slow and steady, so

they stumbled until they matched the step

he had chosen for them all.

Now our playground bully

has become school principal

and we are the students of his reign.

Wise rhythms, clear testimony

must be our love of country

guiding from below.

I have so many hopes for the future, at least as many as my fears. This is my hope for myself today–that I will be presidential in my citizenship. That I will proceed from this day with dignity and fairness, and with steadfast resolve to guide from below and so help to shape the course of those who have set themselves so far above.

Having looked at the mission statement and unity principles of the Women’s March I am very encouraged by the commitment to non-violence and to upholding human rights. My whole family will be marching in several cities. I am enormously encouraged to see that the Women’s March has hundreds of sister marches around the world. I hope that whether you march or not, you will be a fellow citizen in search of a more perfect union, a more inclusive, kind, just, and generous nation.

The poem Presidential Citizens was reprinted by permission of the author from The Flavor of Unity: Post-Election Poems by Kim Stafford (Portland, Oregon, Little Infinities, 2017).