All the Way to the Back

"All the way to the back," she said

"All the way to the back" 

Those words were ingrained into our heads

Was it simply because we were black?

We had to do it, the good kids we were

Taught to do as were told

No time for sass - just march, lad and lass

All the way to the back of the bus

All the way to the back

Fill up those seats - Leave room! Leave room!

No matter how tight you are packed

"All the way, all the way, all the way," she said

All the way to the back.

"All the way to the back," she said

"All the way to the back" 

Words to children so easily uttered

Was it melanin all that she lacked?

Who was this woman with the hypnotist's glare

And the siren's knack?

It was Josie Wroblewski - the gasman's wife

Who said, "All the way to the back." 

She drove the bus, and the lot of us

And did it without any flack

How else could we have made it to school

Except for going all the way to the back

Except for sitting way, way in the back?

This 60s Woodland Park and Bitely did business

Played baseball, rode the same bus

Adjacent black and white rural communities

Never forgetting the thin line between us. 

Fill up those seats - Leave room! Leave room! 

No matter how tight you are packed

"All the way, all the way, all the way," she said

All the way to the back. 

And she got away with it

Until such time as Daria Plaut

Hitched a ride on that bus

She was a teacher's aide at Baldwin High

Heard the cry with the rest of us: 

"All the way to the back"

"All the way to the back"

"All the way to the back of the bus." 

Daria saw how each day we were herded

To clear space for the white kids to sit

Being a Woodland Parker - born and bred

She wasn't having any of it.

This was not Montgomery, Alabama

And Daria never claimed to be Rosa Parks

She heard, "All the way back" -

Stopped it dead in its tracks

Another community climbed out of the dark.

We had joined in a struggle waged across the land

From L.A. to Detroit to D.C. 

Black communities all - rallying to the call 

Of a people bound to be free.

"All the way to the back" - one by one;

Thanks to Big Sis, those days were done

Now, a faint and fading echo

Of a day Woodland Park had won.