Africans on Bicycles
Curio

Jimmy Lee Sudduth, 1987, Mud and Paint on Plywood. $5500

H 26.5 x 50.5"

montgomery at the end of 1955 was a place like many places that have existed before it and still exist today, a place balanced precariously on this lie: some people are worth more than others. like all lies, it was told as long as anyone could remember, and it was everywhere you looked. they said science had proved it; wise men in long robes confirmed it; history books assented. but something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down.* something there is without voice or expression, that knows a lie to be a lie and the truth to be the truth, so when yet another woman was bullied and harrassed and finally arrested because she wouldn't follow the rules, it found a voice. riding the bus home from work after another long day on her feet, rosa parks was too tired to give up her seat to a white passenger, wouldn't let herself be bullied by the bus driver or controlled by a damn lie, so she found herself in jail, because that's where they'd put you when you told the truth. but the thing about lies is they collapse in a single gesture, and like dominoes, they'll fall, until the powerless realize they're not powerless at all. the montgomery bus boycott lasted over a year, just wouldn't go away, like the simple truth it was, continued despite protestors being threatened, harrassed, and imprisoned, continued even after the houses of martin luther king and ralph abernathy were firebombed and four black churches were burnt to the ground. they walked, biked, carpooled, rode in taxis, but there was nothing that could make the black community endorse the bus system or that lying, thieving value system behind it. indeed, the boycott finally ended like a waterfall, what reverend king would later call a miracle, proving segregation to be unconstitutional, beginning something even bigger. africans on bicycles were changing the world.

*robert frost and j s-o'c