Mary Mebane is lecturer in composition at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. The two passages on these pages are excerpted from her just published autobiography, Mary (Viking; $12.95). A lifelong teacher of literature who was born in Durham County, N.C., in 1933, Mebane in her book recounts with insight, compassion and anger what it was like growing up female and black in the South before the civil rights revolution began.
The Morning Bus to Durham
I got on the bus and sat on one of the long seats at the back that faced each other. There were three such long seats—one...
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