Repost: Black History Month: Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks is one of my heroes. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you that I would have loved to have known her; that she is an inspiration to me, to stand up....or sit down....when you want to make a change.

She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. After her parents separated, Rosa's mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards, on their farm. Both her grandparents were former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality.

In one experience, Rosa's grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street. The city of Pine Level, Alabama had a new school building and bus transportation for white students while African American students walked to a one-room schoolhouse, often lacking desks and adequate school supplies. Rosa knew that, merely because of the color of her skin, she would not be treated equally.

In 1929, while in the eleventh grade, Rosa left school to care for her sick grandmother in Pine Level. She never returned to school but instead got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery. In 1932, she married a barber named Raymond Parks who was an active member of the NAACP and with his support, Rosa finished her high school degree in 1933 and she, herself, soon became actively involved in civil rights issues.

Rosa Parks joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, and served as the secretary to the president, E.D. Nixon until 1957.

Now, in those days, not so very long ago, in Montgomery, Alabama, city code required that all public transportation be segregated, and that all bus drivers be given "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code.

While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide "separate but equal"—there's that old chestnut again—accommodation for white and Black passengers by assigning seats. This was accomplished with a line, an actual sign, roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front and African Americans in the back.

But African Americans didn't just have to ride in the back. When they got on the bus, they would pay their fare, then get off the bus, walk to the back and board the bus again. No one wanted “colored” people walking in between the white people.

If the seats in the front of the bus filled up, and more white passengers got on, the bus driver would simply move the sign back, separating Black and white passengers, and ask Black passengers to give up their seats so the whites could sit down.

On December 1, 1955, after a long day working at the Montgomery Fair department store, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She got on, paid her fare, got off, walked to the back, got on again, and found a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers.

Though the city's bus ordinance did give drivers the authority to assign seats, it didn't specifically give them the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of requiring Black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers when no other seats were available. If the Black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.

As the bus Rosa was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. This apparently was unacceptable. He stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row and asked the four Black passengers in that row to give up their seats. Three complied, but Rosa refused. She stayed seated.

The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?"

Rosa replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up."

Can I get a You Go, Girl.

The driver called the police, who arrested Rosa at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, section 11 of the Montgomery City code. She was taken to police headquarters where later that night she was released on bail. On December 8, Rosa faced trial and in a thirty-minute hearing was found guilty of violating a local ordinance. She was fined ten dollars, plus a four-dollar court fee.

The very evening she was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head of the local chapter of the NAACP, began to organize a boycott of Montgomery's city buses. Ads were placed in local papers and handbills were printed and distributed in Black neighborhoods. Members of the African American community were asked to stay off the buses Monday, December 5th in protest of Rosa's arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful.

On Monday, December 5, 1955, a group of African-American community leaders gathered at Mt. Zion Church to discuss strategies. They determined that the effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the "Montgomery Improvement Association"--the MIA--and elected Montgomery newcomer Dr. Martin Luther King, as their first president.

The boycott of December 5th was a success, and so it was continued. Some African-Americans carpooled; others rode in African American-operated cabs. But most of the estimated 40,000 African American commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles to get to work.

Public buses sat idle for months, severely crippling the transit company's finances. But the boycott faced strong resistance, with some segregationists retaliating with violence. Black churches were burned and both Martin Luther King and E.D. Nixon's homes were attacked. Other attempts were made to end the boycott as well. The taxi system used by the African American community to help people get around had its insurance canceled. Other Black people were arrested for violating an old law prohibiting boycotts.

See, the Black folks weren't allowed to protest, or have an opinion, or stay seated.

But the African American community also took action. Under the Brown v. Board of Education decision that said "separate but equal" policies had no place in public education, a black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to federal court.

In June of 1956, the court declared Alabama's racial segregation laws for public transit unconstitutional. The city appealed and on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling. With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering economic loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses.

The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community made the 382-day Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.

That's right, people. The boycott lasted over a year!

Although she was now a symbol for the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks suffered as a result. She lost her job at the department store and her husband lost his after his boss forbade him to discuss his wife or their legal case. They were unable to find work and eventually left Montgomery.

Rosa Parks moved her family—her husband and mother—to Detroit, where she made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionists in U.S. Representative John Conyer's congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In 1987, at age seventy-four, Rosa Parks, along with life-long friend Elaine Eason Steele, founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The institute runs the "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country.

In 1992, she published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography recounting her life in the segregated South. In 1995, her memoirs, Quiet Strength, focused on the role religious faith played in her life.

Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest award. She also received the Martin Luther King Jr. Award. On September 9, 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Rosa Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the U.S. executive branch. The next year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch. In 1999, Time magazine named Rosa Parks one of the 20 most influential people of the twentieth century.

On October 24, 2005, at the age of ninety-two, Rosa Parks quietly died in her apartment. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive dementia. Her death was marked by several memorial services, among them lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. where an estimated 50,000 people viewed her casket. Rosa was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel's mausoleum. Shortly after her death the chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.

All of that because she wouldn't give up her seat. People used to say that Rosa wouldn't get up because she'd worked all day and was tired but she, herself, said she wasn't physically tired, she was just "tired of giving in."

I know that feeling all too well.

Repost: Black History Month: Freedom Summer

Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register Black people to vote during the summer of 1964. Thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern states that summer to put an end to the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. Although Black men had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the 15th Amendment, for the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that right.

White local and state officials systematically kept Black people from voting through formal methods, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and through cruder methods of fear and intimidation, which included beatings and lynchings.

The inability to vote was just one of many problems Black people encountered in the racist South, but the civil-rights officials who decided to zero in on voter registration understood its crucial significance; so did the white supremacists. An African American voting bloc would be able to effect social and political change, especially in the South with its large African American population.

Freedom Summer marked the climax of intensive voter-registration activities in the South that had started in 1961. Organizers chose to focus their efforts on Mississippi because of the state's particularly dismal voting-rights record: in 1962 only 6.7% of African Americans in Mississippi were registered to vote, the lowest in the nation.

The Freedom Summer campaign was organized by a coalition called the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations, which was led by the Congress of Racial Equality--CORE--and included the NAACP, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC.

By mobilizing volunteer white college students from the North to join them, the coalition scored a major public relations coup as hundreds of reporters came to Mississippi from around the country to cover the voter-registration campaign.

The organization of the Mississippi Freedom Party--MFDP--was a major focus of the summer program. More than 80,000 Mississippians joined the new party, which elected a slate of sixty-eight delegates to the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City. The MFDP delegation challenged the seating of the delegates representing Mississippi's all white Democratic Party.

While the effort failed, it drew national attention, particularly through the dramatic televised appeal of MFDP delegate Fannie Lou Hamer. The MFDP challenge also led to a ban on racially discriminatory delegations at future conventions.

Freedom Summer officials also established 30 "Freedom Schools" in towns throughout Mississippi to address the racial inequalities in that state's educational system. Mississippi's Black schools were invariably poorly funded, and teachers had to use hand-me-down textbooks that offered a racist slant on American history.

Many of the white college students were assigned to teach in these schools, whose curriculum included Black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, and leadership development in addition to remedial instruction in reading and arithmetic.

Freedom Schools had hoped to draw at least 1000 students that first summer and ended up with 3000. Schools became a model for future social programs like Head Start, as well as alternative educational institutions.

Freedom Summer activists faced threats and harassment throughout the campaign, not only from white supremacist groups, but from local residents and police. Freedom School buildings and the volunteers' homes were frequent targets; 37 Black churches and 30 Black homes and businesses were firebombed or burned during the summer of 1964; and the cases often went unsolved.

More than 1000 black and white volunteers were arrested, and at least 80 were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers. But the summer's most infamous act of violence was the murder of three young civil rights workers, a black volunteer, James Chaney, and his white coworkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

On June 21, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner set out to investigate a church bombing near Philadelphia, Mississippi, but were arrested that afternoon and held for several hours on alleged traffic violations. Their release from jail was the last time they were seen alive before their badly decomposed bodies were discovered under a nearby dam six weeks later. Goodman and Schwerner had died from single gunshot wounds to the chest, and Chaney, the only African American in the trio, from a savage beating.

The murders made headlines all over the country and provoked an outpouring of national support for the Civil Rights Movement. But many black volunteers realized that because two of the victims were white, these murders were attracting much more attention than previous attacks in which the victims had been black, and this added to the growing resentment they had begun to feel towards the white volunteers.

There was also growing dissension among the ranks over charges of assumed white elitism. Black volunteers complained that whites seemed to think they had a natural claim on leadership roles, and that they treated the rural Black people as though they were ignorant. There was also increasing hostility from both Black and white workers over the interracial romances that developed the summer. Meanwhile, women volunteers of both races were charging both the Black and white men with sexist behavior.

But despite the internal divisions, Freedom Summer left a positive legacy. The well-publicized voter registration drives brought national attention to the subject of black disenfranchisement, and this eventually led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, federal legislation that, among other things, outlawed the tactics Southern states had used to prevent blacks from voting.

Freedom Summer also instilled among African Americans a new consciousness and a new confidence in political action. As Fannie Lou Hamer later said, "Before the 1964 project there were people that wanted change, but they hadn't dared to come out. After 1964 people began moving. To me it's one of the greatest things that ever happened in Mississippi."

Julian Bond: RIP ... And Thank You

Julian Bond, Civil Rights leader, activist, politician, professor and writer died yesterday at the age of seventy-five.

From the 60s the the 21st Century he fought for change, for equality. He helped establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC] and he served for over twenty years in the Georgia House of Representatives and its Senate. He was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC]; he was selected as chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] and stayed on until 2009 when the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. 

For Bond Civil Rights means rights for everyone, and he was as outspoken an advocate for the LGBT community as he was for the African American community. He publicly stated his support for same-sex marriage and even boycotted the funeral services for Coretta Scott King — who supported LGBT rights — on the grounds that the King children had chosen an anti-gay church as the venue; he was a lot of things, to a lot of people, but let’s have Julian Bond tell us who he was in his own words:

African Americans ... were the only Americans who were enslaved for two centuries, but we were far from the only Americans suffering discrimination then and now.... Sexual disposition parallels race. I was born this way. I have no choice. I wouldn’t change it if I could. Sexuality is unchangeable.

The civil rights movement didn't begin in Montgomery and it didn't end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute.

Discrimination is discrimination no matter who the victim is, and it is always wrong. There are no special rights in America, despite the attempts by many to divide blacks and the gay community with the argument that the latter are seeking some imaginary special rights at the expense of blacks.

If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married.

I do think that some of us began to realize that this was going to be a long struggle that was going to go on for decades, and you’d have to knuckle down. A lot of people in our generation did that. They didn’t drop out and run away.

Most of those who made the movement were not famous, they were the faceless. They were the nameless, the marchers with tired feet, the protesters beat back with fire hoses and billy clubs, and the unknown women and men who risked job and home and life.

If your Bible tells you that gay people ought not be married in your church, don't tell them they can't be married at city hall. Marriage is a civil rite as well a civil right, and we can't let religious bigotry close the door to justice to anyone.The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others.

There is no coloration to rights. Everybody has rights. I don’t care who you are, where you come from. You got rights. I got rights. All God’s children got rights. We could make a song out of this. But anyway, I think this discussion is more a diversion than anything else. Because we all have rights. And they are human rights because we are human beings. And that’s just it for me.

RIP … and Thank You

Good News!! Homophobia Is A Myth, Y'all!!

Ryan Bomberger  is one of those rightwingnuts I lambaste and criticize and, well, yes, make fun of, on my little bloggy thing here, but something Bomberger said recently really has my dander up, and I wondered how best to show him how wrong he is, yet again.

See Ryan Bomberger, who is rabidly anti-choice, was speaking at the Values Voters Summit and began his tirade by criticizing the NAACP and their, in his words, “radical pro-abortion actions.” He ranted that legal abortion is a plot to realize black genocide, and asked that the NAACP’s acronym be changed to stand for the “National Association for the Abortion of Colored People.”

Outrageous, yes, and idiotic, and that had me raring to go at him, but then he took on The Gays and claimed that the fight for equality in this country is increasing “hostility towards Christianity in this country.”

I guess Bomberger never met a gay Christian, Baptist or Catholic. But then he added, that he believes homophobia is nothing but a myth, and explained his love for gay people by comparing The Gays to kleptomaniacs:

“The absurdity of terminology like homophobia; so for the people who cohabitate, if you don’t agree with that behavior are you a cohabiphobic? Or if you disagree with someone who has a habitual stealing problem, are you a kleptophobic? That’s the insanity of this; tolerance demands anything but tolerance, just complete formality to someone’s sense of poll-driven morality.”

Wow. Homophobia is a myth. And apparently a myth strong enough to kill people, like Matthew Shepard, to maim people like Scott Jones, to force gay people to hide away, and deny themselves. It’s a myth y’all, come on out of the closet, there’s no danger here. No one’s out to get you, to beat you, kick, stab or kill you, deny you housing, fire you from your job, turn you away from their motels and receptions halls. It’s a myth.

And then I saw this story, about a man who was flying from Perth to Brisbane, Australia, and when he went to pick up his bag at the luggage carousel, he sound his bag stamped with the words: “I am gay.” Jetstar, the airline the man was using for travel, has said they are investigating the matter but it’s highly doubtful we’ll ever find out who did it.

And yet the man whose luggage was vandalized, well, he understands homophobia now in a way that he perhaps never did, because he’s a straight man, who Tweeted that image of his suitcase last weekend:

"Utterly disgusted to find my luggage front and center on the @JetstarAirways luggage carousel looking like this."

He also has a blog, One Sleepy Dad, upon which he wrote of his experience:

“Having missed out a night's sleep, I am quite tired at this moment and ask that any mechanical language errors below be treated kindly.

Yesterday I tweeted a photo of my luggage after a Jetstar flight from Perth and it has caused quite the stir on social media. It has burst out of my own digital echo chamber and has been reverberating around the world for the past 24 hours.

I would like to point out that Jetstar has contacted me and offered a very sincere apology. For which I am grateful.

They are also conducting a "serious" investigation that I am assisting them with. Their PR machine is making all the right noises and saying all the right things. I have set no expectations of Jetstar with regards to their procedures or outcomes.

I have also been approached by media of all forms from around the globe but I have not offered any comment or answered any questions. Whatever you read/hear/see is based purely on the content of my Twitter feed and the posts in this blog. In the age of soundbites and limited column inches, I am not confident that anything I say won't be used out of context for the sake of time/space limits. Also, I can't keep up with the requests so I apologise if you don't get a personal and polite decline to your queries.

What I would like to share with you is what happened from the point where my luggage is on the carousel. I won't speculate as to what happened in the lead up.

My suitcase was the first bag on the carousel. The entire flight's passengers were shoulder-to-shoulder looking for their bags and I'm pretty sure that most people would've seen mine rattling along the rollers. I saw a big red case approaching and excused my way through the throng in order to retrieve it. I noticed some white bits on the side and turned back, apologising to the people who I had just pushed passed. "False alarm," I said to one gent. Then I realised that it actually was my bag and that the white bits were the sign you see in the image above.

I plucked the suitcase off the carousel and had many eyes look me up and down. I was taken aback by the slogan but thought I had thick enough skin to ignore the leering. My connecting flight was about to board so I had to speed through the terminal to check in with Qantas. As I dragged the case through the terminal, I looked back at the people I had passed and they too looked at me differently. My luggage was a scarlet letter.

I am a white heterosexual male. This trifecta of privilege means that I'm not routinely subjected to prejudice. But for a few minutes I got to walk in the shoes of a gay person in a public place. For no good reason I had had a slur marked over my luggage. I was degraded. I was shamed. I was humiliated.

For me, this was only a few minutes of one day of my life. If what I felt for those few minutes is extrapolated out every day over a lifetime, then I can fully understand why our gay friends feel persecuted and why they have such high rates of suicide. It is unacceptable.

It is said that words can't hurt you. That it is true. But it isn't the words that hurt, it's the intention behind them. "I am gay" was not emblazened across my luggage as a celebration. It was used as a pejorative. It was used to humiliate. It was used as a slur.

Some people have been commenting that it's probably just some loser in backrooms making a distasteful joke. Or that Jetstar has a culture of homophobia. Unfortunately, the mistreatment of our gay friends spans society. It goes all the way up to our political leaders and includes such luminaries as our Prime Minister. Our laws ensure that homosexuals are not afforded the same rights and dignities that many of us straight people take for granted every day.

Until our political/religious/community leaders acknowledge and address these inequalities, until we de-normalise prejudice, we can't expect the "losers" to follow.

As for the people calling me a whiner and telling me to toughen up, I would like to quote Lieutenant General David Morrison: The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. 

This incident isn't about me, it's about what we as a society find acceptable.”

Funny, that; how a myth works, eh? Maybe Ryan Bomberger should have to experience walking through a crowd with a sign that says he’s gay and see how he feels about his myth.

Bomberger: Homophobia A Myth

One Sleepy Dad

Next, Watch Him Pull A Rabbit Out Of His, er, Hat

Not only does Mittsy not seem to know his audience very well, he seems completely unaware when he flips, and then right after that he flops.

Emphasis on 'flops.'

See, Mittsy was speaking to the NAACP--whose board of directors passed a same-sex marriage resolution two months ago--and he stressed the fact that he will represent all Americans, of “every race, creed and sexual orientation” if he was elected.

That was his flip.

Then he added that he opposes same-sex marriage.

Flop.

See what he does? He'll represent all of us, even those with a different sexual orientation that The Great Romney, but he won't budge on the notion of marriage equality: "As president, I will promote strong families and defend traditional marriage.”

Apparently, gay couples don't make for a strong family, and traditional marriage, well, does he mean the traditional marriage of his grandfather who had more than one wife, or does he mean the traditional marriage of no interracial marriage?

Which tradition, Mittsy?

Sharon Lettman-Hicks, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition said, “It is the president’s duty to protect all Americans and their families under the law. Thousands of LGBT couples are raising children and have marriages rooted in love and lifelong commitment--you don’t get more traditional than that. The U.S. Census shows that these couples are also more likely to be people of color, especially African American. If Romney’s pledge is to represent Americans of ‘every race, creed and sexual orientation,’ that includes loving and committed LGBT couples and the families they are providing for and protecting.”

Except he doesn't mean what he says.

R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans: “With his opening remarks to the NAACP today, Governor Romney sent a message that he recognizes the importance of an inclusive Republican vision for victory in November. He deserves credit for taking the step to include sexual orientation by name. That said, it is unfortunate that he countered his outreach to gay and lesbian Americans with a gratuitous attack on the freedom to marry. If Governor Romney truly desires to represent all Americans, Log Cabin Republicans encourages him to avoid divisive social issues and focus on jobs and the economy.”

Um, but he won't, because he's pandering to the most conservative faction of the GOP, because that's what Mittsy does, he says what he thinks you want to here, and then he says something else to a different group of people.

Fred Sainz, HRC spokesperson: "Mitt Romney doesn’t seem to think LGBT families deserve the same dignity and respect as the other families he vowed to protect in his remarks today before the NAACP. Romney refuses to recognize civil unions for LGBT couples--an extremist position he doesn’t even share with former President George W. Bush. Despite the NAACP’s historic endorsement of marriage equality and polling that shows nearly 60 percent of African Americans support marriage for their LGBT friends and loved ones, Romney continues to tow the line that LGBT people don’t deserve equal rights, benefits and protections under the law.”

But that's Mittsy. And that's what makes him so non-presidential. That he can stand before a group and say one thing--that he'll represent all of us--and then in the next breath offer the "except" shows that he'll do and say anything to become president. And that means we don't know anything about the man, where he stands on anything because he's too busy trying to stand on both sides at the same time, and even Mittsy isn't that adept.

source

The Evolution Continues......

Just days after President Obama's historic announcement that he supports marriage equality, the board of the NAACP, one of the nation’s oldest and largest African American advocacy organizations, has passed a resolution to also support same-sex marriage.

Board chair, Roslyn Brock: “The mission of the NAACP has always been to ensure the political, social and economic equality of all people. We have and will oppose efforts to codify discrimination into law.”

Brock's announcement comes on the heels of NAACP chairman emeritus, Julian Bond, who has already pledged his support for marriage equality earlier in the week, as part of a coalition of black leaders trying to tamp down speculation that Obama’s support of gay marriage would divide the black community.

And it won't because, well, it's simple, equality does not divide people, it unties them.

And the NAACP resolution and statement specifically noted its support of “civil marriage” for same sex couples, while respecting religious freedom--something nearly everyone who works for marriage equality understands. Churches should not be forced to perform same-sex unions unless they choose.

Here is the full resolution released Saturday:

“The NAACP Constitution affirmatively states our objective to ensure the “political, educational, social and economic equality” of all people. Therefore, the NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens. We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.  Further, we strongly affirm the religious freedoms of all people as protected by the First Amendment.”

Perfection. 

via Politico

Wise Words Simple Words

"The first thing we need to do is make real the words of your charter and eradicate prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination among citizens of the United States. I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there probably has never been less discrimination in America than there is today. But make no mistake: the pain of discrimination is still felt in America. By African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and a different gender. By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion simply because they kneel down to pray to their God. By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights. On the 45th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, discrimination must not stand. Not on account of color or gender; how you worship or who you love. Prejudice has no place in the United States of America."

--President Obama addresseing the NAACP at its Centennial Convention.

Rosa Parks

I do like to save the best for last.

Rosa Parks is one of my heroes. Ask most anyone who knows me and they'll tell you that I would have loved to have known her; that she is an inspiration to me, to stand up....or sit down....when you want to make a change.

She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. After her parents separated, Rosa's mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards, on their farm. Both her grandparents were former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality.

In one experience, Rosa's grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street. The city of Pine Level, Alabama had a new school building and bus transportation for white students while African American students walked to a one-room schoolhouse, often lacking desks and adequate school supplies. Rosa knew that, merely because of the color of her skin, she would not be treated equally.

In 1929, while in the eleventh grade, Rosa left school to attend to her sick grandmother in Pine Level. She never returned to school, but instead got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery. In 1932, she married a barber named Raymond Parks who was an active member of the NAACP. With Raymond's support, Rosa Parks finished her high school degree in 1933 and she, herself, soon became actively involved in civil rights issues.

Rosa Parks joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, and served as the secretary to the president, E.D. Nixon until 1957.

Now, in those days, not so very long ago, in Montgomery, Alabama, city code required that all public transportation be segregated, and that all bus drivers be given "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code.

While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide "separate but equal"--there's that old chestnut again--accommodations for white and black passengers by assigning seats. This was accomplished with a line, an actual sign, roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front and African Americans in the back.

But African Americans didn't just have to ride in the back. When they got on the bus, they would pay their fare, then get off the bus, walk to the back and reboard. No one wanted colored people walking in between the white people.

If the seats in the front of the bus filled up, and more white passengers got on, the bus driver would simply move the sign back, separating black and white passengers, and ask black passengers give up their seats so the whites could sit down.

On December 1, 1955, after a long day working at the Montgomery Fair department store, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She got on, paid her fare, got off, walked to the back, got on again, and found a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers.

Though the city's bus ordinance did give drivers the authority to assign seats, it didn't specifically give them the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of requiring black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers when no other seats were available. If the black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.

As the bus Rosa was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. This apparently was unacceptable. He stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row and asked the four black passengers in that row to give up their seats. Three complied, but Rosa refused. She stayed seated.

The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?"

Rosa replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up."

Can I get a You Go, Girl.

The driver called the police, who arrested Rosa at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, section 11 of the Montgomery City code. She was taken to police headquarters where later that night she was released on bail. On December 8, Rosa faced trial and in a thirty-minute hearing was found guilty of violating a local ordinance. She was fined ten dollars, plus a four-dollar court fee.

The very evening she was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head of the local chapter of the NAACP, began to organize a boycott of Montgomery's city buses. Ads were placed in local papers and handbills were printed and distributed in black neighborhoods. Members of the African American community were asked to stay off the buses Monday, December 5th in protest of Rosa's arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful.

On Monday, December 5, 1955, a group of African-American community leaders gathered at Mt. Zion Church to discuss strategies. They determined that the effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the "Montgomery Improvement Association"--the MIA--and elected Montgomery newcomer Dr. Martin Luther King, as their first president.

The boycott of December 5th was a success, and so it was continued. Some African-Americans carpooled, others rode in African American-operated cabs. But most of the estimated 40,000 African American commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles to get to work.

Public buses sat idle for months, severely crippling the transit company's finances. But the boycott faced strong resistance, with some segregationists retaliating with violence. Black churches were burned and both Martin Luther King and E.D. Nixon's homes were attacked. Other attempts were made to end the boycott as well. The taxi system used by the African American community to help people get around had its insurance canceled. Other blacks were arrested for violating an old law prohibiting boycotts.

See, the black folks weren't allowed to protest, or have an opinion, or stay seated.

But the African American community also took action. Under the Brown v. Board of Education decision that said "separate but equal" policies had no place in public education, a black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to federal court.

In June of 1956, the court declared Alabama's racial segregation laws for public transit unconstitutional. The city appealed and on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling. With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses.

The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community made the 382-day Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.

That's right, people. The boycott lasted over a year!

Although she was now a symbol for the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks suffered as a result. She lost her job at the department store and her husband lost his after his boss forbade him to discuss his wife or their legal case. They were unable to find work and eventually left Montgomery.

Rosa Parks moved her family--her husband and mother--to Detroit, where she made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionists in U.S. Representative John Conyer's congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In 1987, at age seventy-four, Rosa Parks, along with life-long friend Elaine Eason Steele, founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The institute runs the "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country.

In 1992, she published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography recounting her life in the segregated South. In 1995, her memoirs, Quiet Strength, focused on the role religious faith played in her life.

Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest award. She also received the Martin Luther King Jr. Award. On September 9, 1996 President Bill Clinton awarded Rosa Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the U.S. executive branch. The next year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch. In 1999, Time magazine named Rosa Parks one of the 20 most influential people of the twentieth century.

On October 24, 2005, at the age of ninety-two, Rosa Parks quietly died in her apartment. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive dementia. Her death was marked by several memorial services, among them lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. where an estimated 50,000 people viewed her casket. Rosa was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel's mausoleum. Shortly after her death the chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.

All of that because she wouldn't give up her seat. People used to say that Rosa wouldn't get up because she'd worked all day and was tired.

She, herself, said she wasn't physically tired, she was just "tired of giving in."

I know that feeling all too well.

Freedom Summer

Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register blacks to vote during the summer of 1964. Thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern states that summer to put an end to the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. Although black men had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the 15th Amendment, for the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that right.

White local and state officials systematically kept blacks from voting through formal methods, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and through cruder methods of fear and intimidation, which included beatings and lynchings.

The inability to vote was just one of many problems blacks encountered in the racist South, but the civil-rights officials who decided to zero in on voter registration understood its crucial significance; so did the white supremacists. An African American voting bloc would be able to effect social and political change, especially in the South with its large African American population.

Freedom Summer marked the climax of intensive voter-registration activities in the South that had started in 1961. Organizers chose to focus their efforts on Mississippi because of the state's particularly dismal voting-rights record: in 1962 only 6.7% of African Americans in Mississippi were registered to vote, the lowest in the nation.

The Freedom Summer campaign was organized by a coalition called the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations, which was led by the Congress of Racial Equality--CORE--and included the NAACP, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC.

By mobilizing volunteer white college students from the North to join them, the coalition scored a major public relations coup as hundreds of reporters came to Mississippi from around the country to cover the voter-registration campaign.

The organization of the Mississippi Freedom Party--MFDP--was a major focus of the summer program. More than 80,000 Mississippians joined the new party, which elected a slate of sixty-eight delegates to the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City. The MFDP delegation challenged the seating of the delegates representing Mississippi's all white Democratic Party.

While the effort failed, it drew national attention, particularly through the dramatic televised appeal of MFDP delegate Fannie Lou Hamer. The MFDP challenge also lead to a ban on racially discriminatory delegations at future conventions.

Freedom Summer officials also established 30 "Freedom Schools" in towns throughout Mississippi to address the racial inequalities in that state's educational system. Mississippi's black schools were invariably poorly funded, and teachers had to use hand-me-down textbooks that offered a racist slant on American history.

Many of the white college students were assigned to teach in these schools, whose curriculum included black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, and leadership development in addition to remedial instruction in reading and arithmetic.

The Freedom Schools had hoped to draw at least 1000 students that first summer, and ended up with 3000. The schools became a model for future social programs like Head Start, as well as alternative educational institutions.

Freedom Summer activists faced threats and harassment throughout the campaign, not only from white supremacist groups, but from local residents and police. Freedom School buildings and the volunteers' homes were frequent targets; 37 black churches and 30 black homes and businesses were firebombed or burned during the summer of 1964; and the cases often went unsolved.

More than 1000 black and white volunteers were arrested, and at least 80 were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers. But the summer's most infamous act of violence was the murder of three young civil rights workers, a black volunteer, James Chaney, and his white coworkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

On June 21, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner set out to investigate a church bombing near Philadelphia, Mississippi, but were arrested that afternoon and held for several hours on alleged traffic violations. Their release from jail was the last time they were seen alive before their badly decomposed bodies were discovered under a nearby dam six weeks later. Goodman and Schwerner had died from single gunshot wounds to the chest, and Chaney, the only African American in the trio, from a savage beating.

The murders made headlines all over the country, and provoked an outpouring of national support for the Civil Rights Movement. But many black volunteers realized that because two of the victims were white, these murders were attracting much more attention than previous attacks in which the victims had been black, and this added to the growing resentment they had begun to feel towards the white volunteers.

There was also growing dissension among the ranks over charges of assumed white elitism. Black volunteers complained that whites seemed to think they had a natural claim on leadership roles, and that they treated the rural blacks as though they were ignorant. There was also increasing hostility from both black and white workers over the interracial romances that developed the summer. Meanwhile, women volunteers of both races were charging both the black and white men with sexist behavior.

But despite the internal divisions, Freedom Summer left a positive legacy. The well-publicized voter registration drives brought national attention to the subject of black disenfranchisement, and this eventually led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, federal legislation that, among other things, outlawed the tactics Southern states had used to prevent blacks from voting.

Freedom Summer also instilled among African Americans a new consciousness and a new confidence in political action. As Fannie Lou Hamer later said, "Before the 1964 project there were people that wanted change, but they hadn't dared to come out. After 1964 people began moving. To me it's one of the greatest things that ever happened in Mississippi."