One cheeseburger, please

All Bruce Boynton wanted was a cheeseburger.

When I want a cheeseburger, it's easy enough. I go to my local McDonald's, or Burger King, or Wendy's, step up to the counter, and say, "I'd like a cheeseburger with fries and a Coke."

If I want a fancier cheeseburger, I'll probably go to Applebee's or Chili's. 

If I want to put forth the effort, I'll make one at home.

But Bruce Boynton wanted a cheeseburger . . . in 1958 . . . in a bus station in Richmond, Virginia . . . and he was African-American. And although federal law banned segregation in interstate travel, the bus station was segregated by color. 

So when Bruce Boynton, hungry and weary from bus travel, got off the bus, all he wanted was something to eat.   

But when he went to the part of the restaurant that was meant for blacks, he saw an eating area that, in his words, was "very unsanitary".

So he walked over to the white section, which he described as "clinically clean", and told the waitress, "I'll have a cheeseburger and tea."

The waitress left and came back with the manager.

His order for this hungry man, who just wanted a cheeseburger?

"Move!" accompanied by a racial slur.

Bruce Boynton was hungry. He wanted a cheeseburger. He did not want to eat it in a dirty restaurant. 

So, following the example of Rosa Parks, he said, "No." He pointed out that he was an American citizen with federal rights and thus was entitled to his cheeseburger and tea. As a law student at Howard University, Boynton knew his rights and knew the law.

It didn't matter.  Boynton was arrested and convicted on a charge of trespassing.

He appealed his case all the way up to the Supreme Court, with future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall as his counsel. In 1960, the SCOTUS, in Boynton v. Virginia, sided with Boynton, ruling that "when a bus carrier has volunteered to make terminal and restaurant facilities and services available to its interstate passengers as a regular part of their transportation, and the terminal and restaurant have
acquiesced and cooperated in this undertaking, the terminal and restaurant must perform these services without discriminations prohibited by the Act." 

Unfortunately, the Interstate Commerce Commission didn't enforce the SCOTUS ruling.  Jim Crow in the South continued.

So in 1961, groups of people climbed aboard interstate buses, the Greyhounds and the Trailways, and rode straight into the arms of white mobs waiting for them in places like Anniston, Alabama and  Birmingham, Alabama.

For exercising a right guaranteed to them by the Supreme Court of the United States, they were attacked and beaten severely. It took their blood on the floor -- the blood of John Lewis, C.T. Vivian, Stokely Carmichael (also known as Kwame Ture) and others -- on the floor of a bus station to finally get the right to ride a bus, a right that whites took for granted.

In 1961, the "whites only" and "coloreds only" signs came down in the waiting rooms of interstate bus lines.

Bruce Boynton died on Monday at the age of 83, in Selma, Alabama, his hometown. He put his legal education and experience to work as a civil rights attorney after initially being unable to get a law license in Alabama.

I only learned of Bruce Boynton, and his story, this morning, while scrolling through the pages of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the man who, just because he wanted a cheeseburger, ended up inspiring the movement that ended segregation in interstate travel and helped pave the way for the civil rights acts now enshrined in federal law.

As US District Judge Myron Thompson said in Boynton's obituary, "All he wanted was a cheeseburger, and he changed the course of history."

I will never look at cheeseburgers the same way again.

So, next time I go to a restaurant and say, "One cheeseburger, please," I hope to remember Bruce Boynton, a time when his order for a cheeseburger was met with "Move!", and toast his courage with a ground beef patty with cheese on top, tucked securely into a bun.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Obituary notice

Thelma Laverne Chitwood Sergent, 79, died on Saturday, November 4, 2017, at the Suncoast Hospice Care Center in Pinellas Park, Florida.  She was preceded in death by her parents, Ralph and Ary Chitwood; her husband, Charles Tony Sergent; and a sister, Mary Alice Walker. 

She is survived by her daughters, Toni Renee Swertferger of St. Petersburg, Florida and Tina Allyn Seward of Norcross, Georgia; two grandchildren, Lauren Renee Swertferger of St. Petersburg, Florida and Matthew James Seward of Norcross, Georgia; a brother, Jack Chitwood of Loveland, Ohio; and several nieces and nephews. 

The body will be cremated.  Other arrangements are pending. 

Mary Tyler Moore, December 29, 1936-January 25, 2017

"Who can turn the world on with her smile . . .?"

For seven seasons, between 1970 and 1977, millions of Americans tuned into CBS on Saturdays at 9 p.m. to learn the answer to that question.

Her name was Mary Tyler Moore, and when she died on Wednesday, she was rightfully hailed as "iconic".

My generation grew up knowing her as Mary Richards, single, professional newswoman, who worked at the fictional WJM-TV in Minneapolis.  We saw her spar with her boss, Lou Grant, ("I hate spunk!") and groan at the antics of Ted Baxter.  When her series ended in 1977, Mary's character said, as one of her last lines, "Thank you for being my family."  Whether that was written in the script, or she ad-libbed it, I have no doubt that she meant it--not only speaking as her character to her fellow characters, but speaking as an actress to her fellow thespians.

My parents' generation knew her as Laura Petrie from The Dick Van Dyke Show, with her signature catchphrase, "Oh, Rob!"  Last night, while watching a CBS special about Mary Tyler Moore, it was mentioned that Mary's Capri pants were groundbreaking--the network complained, "She should be in a skirt!"

I didn't realize that Mary Tyler Moore played a groundbreaking feminist who showed women that it was okay to not have a date on Saturday nights, because they could stay home and watch Mary.  No, it was just a fun show for me to watch, a fun show with a catchy title theme that you could sing along to.  (I even played the tambourine along with it one time, over my sister's protests!)

I do remember one show where Mary and her date came back to the apartment and the date started taking off his shirt.  I was young, naive, and uneducated in certain areas, and I didn't understand why he was taking his shirt off, nor did I understand why Mary got so upset with him.  I do remember her doing the math and realizing she'd been on, "2000 dates!"

When Mary Tyler Moore played Betty Rollin in "First, You Cry", a TV movie based on Rollin's memoir of her struggle with breast cancer, a reviewer noted that one thing that MTM could do was act, and that she shouldn't be ashamed of it.  I've remembered that review off and on.  MTM is underrated as a serious actress.  She, along with Carol Burnett, is one of a rare handful of actors and actresses who can do comedy and drama equally well.  In 1981, I sat in the Moore Auditorium at Florida State University and watched Ordinary People, the movie that earned MTM an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.  Several years later, she played opposite James Garner in Heartsounds, the story of a couple's struggle after the husband suffered two severe heart attacks.

Her real-life struggles also made news.  She dealt with alcoholism.  She was married three times and divorced twice.  Her only child accidentally shot and killed himself in 1980.  She also had Type 1 diabetes, and when testifying before a Congressional committee, she described the "tyranny" that diabetes wracked on her every day of her life.

In later years, the diabetes attacked her eyes and kidneys.  In a 2014 episode of Hot In Cleveland, the five women who'd participated in the Mary Tyler Moore show -- Betty White, Cloris Leachman, Valerie Harper, Georgia Engle, and Mary herself -- came together for a reunion show.

In the scene, the first four women walked into a restaurant where another woman held a menu in front of her face.  When the menu dropped, revealing Mary Tyler Moore's face, the crowd roared, and Betty commented, "Well, looks like she made it after all!"

By that time, Mary was nearly blind.

She died with her husband, Richard Levine, at her side.

In the first season of the Mary Tyler Moore show, the question the theme song asked was not the famous, "Who can turn the world on with her smile?" Rather, it was, "How will you make it on your own?"  The lyrics addressed the premise of the series, which was that of a woman who'd just ended a relationship and was moving to the big city to start over.  The song ended with, "You might just make it after all."

When the series was picked up for a second season, the network called the songwriter, Sonny Curtis, and told him, we need new lyrics!

He focused on the personality of Mary Richards -- the woman who could turn the world on with her smile, who could take a nothing date and make it seem worthwhile -- and ended with the optimistic declaration, "You're gonna make it after all!"

She did make it after all.  She turned the world on with her smile.  We are richer for having known that smile, and poorer now that it is gone.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.