“Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus” by Ana Maria Spagna

I found this book at a recent workshop facilitated by the author. It was my first time working with Ana Maria Spagna, a talented, courageous, caring woman who lives in Stehekin, Washington. TEST RIDE, part mystery, part history, part memoir, struck and surprised me with its relevance to the injustices we’re witnessing today.

The Civil Rights movement was a distinct piece of my Mississippi upbringing. Though I was painfully aware of the black/white divide and the relegation of an entire culture to the “lesser than” category, I was too self-centered and wild to be activist material. I did teach at an historically black college, and my six years there in the 1980’s provided a glimpse of the complexities blacks face in overcoming discrimination and danger.

Ana Maria set out to find more than a glimpse. She knew that her father, Joseph Spagna, who died when she was eleven, had, in 1957, when blacks could not sit anywhere but the back of the bus,  boarded a city bus called the Sunnyland in Tallahassee, Florida. Spagna and the other riders—three blacks and two whites—planned to get arrested and take their case to the Supreme Court. Ana Maria knew little more than that, as she’d never heard her father speak of the incident.

TEST RIDE follows Ana Maria on her 2005 pilgrimage to Tallahassee and the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the bus boycott. She seeks out the other bus riders, in their seventies now, and tries to piece together the truth from their conflicting stories. “I’m realizing that history,” she says, “is full of slights, big and small.” Ana Maria is conflicted herself, with unresolved feelings about her father and with guilt and worry about her mother, diagnosed with terminal cancer. Ana Maria skillfully weaves her personal stories with accounts of her father’s story and kept me engaged and eager to learn more.

I liked Ana Maria more and more as I saw her reveal herself with vulnerability and honesty. That I got upset and angry as I read about the Florida boycott is a tribute to her ability to paint a picture of  the cruelty and brutality the protestors endured. Given our current political situation, I need to be fired up these days, and this book did just that.

I was particularly taken with Ana Maria’s acounts of John Lewis’s speech at the Tallahassee gathering, as I’ve read about his recent sit-in demanding a vote on gun-safety legislation. In Tallahassee, Lewis said we all need to “get in the way.” He said “we make it better” when we do. He says, “Things can happen.” I can’t imagine a better message to absorb and carry out.

TEST RIDE ON THE SUNNYLAND BUS reminded me that heroes and sheroes come in all ages and colors and walks of life. It convinced me that I can be a shero. And it gave me something I need more than anything these days. It gave me hope that I and you and we can make a difference.
 

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