Rosa Parks's Poem by Carole Boston Weatherford, ""December 1st, 1955: Before Rosa Altered History."

`For Southern belles who scour shops for ball gowns, not mirrored in bridge and garden club circles, the holidays are a blur of invitations. The women flock to Montgomery Fair for alterations, tucks here, gussets there and deep hems. Not even mannequins are a perfect size eight. In the whites-only fitting room, Rosa `Yes, Ma'ams' each gloved lady, then returns to the Singer, dizzy from the social whirl she tastes vicariously through customers bidding her to drape flawed figures with chiffon. Yards of silk, satin, velvet slide between needle and treadle. Beads and sequins, like missed chances, slip through her fingers. Thirty days till New Year's Eve, then five months before cotillion. For a few weeks, empty racks and room to breathe, no giggling debutantes, no gossipy matrons with coffee-stained teeth, cigarette breath and syrupy drawls. Tired of Miss Ann, Rosa anticipates quitting time, the glow of Christmas lights and the long ride home. She removes her thimble, knowing that a hoop skirt can pass through the eye of a needle easier than a colored seamstress can hold a seat on a city bus.'