The Obama administration is tackling some of the most insidious civil rights issues of our time

[freshwest]

3. I will also add this about the Obama Administration and how it ties much of my life together:

Last edited Tue Jul 23, 2013, 11:39 AM - Edit history (1)

Rosa Parks in 1955, with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background

Rosa Parks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

Rosa Parks - The Story Behind the Bus

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American woman who worked as a seamstress, boarded this Montgomery City bus to go home from work. On this bus on that day, Rosa Parks initiated a new era in the American quest for freedom and equality.

She sat near the middle of the bus, just behind the 10 seats reserved for whites. Soon all of the seats in the bus were filled. When a white man entered the bus, the driver (following the standard practice of segregation) insisted that all four blacks sitting just behind the white section give up their seats so that the man could sit there. Mrs. Parks, who was an active member of the local NAACP, quietly refused to give up her seat.

Her action was spontaneous and not pre-meditated, although her previous civil rights involvement and strong sense of justice were obvious influences. "When I made that decision," she said later, “I knew that I had the strength of my ancestors with me.”

She was arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation, known as “Jim Crow laws.” Mrs. Parks appealed her conviction and thus formally challenged the legality of segregation.

http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/rosaparks/story.asp



That was how the bus I rode to school looked. See the back seat. I'll mention that later. Rosa Parks' story upset me, as I was taught that a man or a young person should give up their seat on a bus to an older person or a woman. An expression of the stronger protecting the weaker. I'm sure that sounds ancient now.

I was angry that she was ordered to give up her seat for a man, she being an older woman. As being 42 years old was elderly from my perspective, then, but not now. I fumed to myself about why she was not shown the courtesy and respect that I showed people.

Later as black riders began to sit at the front of the bus, I enjoyed the luxury of going to sit at the long seat at the back of the bus. I smiled there, feeling liberated. The perspective was different, I could see everything.

It felt freer because I was not being confined to my role of being at the front of the bus. You see, whenever a person tries to confine another person, they confine themselves as well.

Like the words of the song:

Right Where It Belongs
by Nine Inch Nails

See the animal in his cage that you built,
Are you sure what side you're on?
Better not look him too closely in the eye,
Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?
See the safety of the life you have built
Everything where it belongs
Feel the hollowness inside of your heart
And it's all, right where it belongs

What if everything around you,
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you think you know,
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection,
Is that all you want to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks,
Would you find yourself, find yourself afraid to see?

What if all the worlds inside of your head,
Just creations of your own?
Your devils and your Gods, all the living and the dead
And you're really all alone?
You could live in this illusion
You can choose to believe
You keep looking but you can't find the woods
While you're hiding in the trees

What if everything around you,
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you used to know,
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection,
Is that all you want to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks,
Would you find yourself, find yourself afraid to see?

That may seem to be a strange thing to be happy about to some, but most people like to choose their own path.

I remember seeing the fire hoses and dogs set on protestors, the governor of Alabama with his stand in the door fuss, and then the murder of Medgar Evers. That shocked me more than anything else that had happened yet.

My father and I were working in our front yard, then I looked out at the street, bringing the image of a man who had just arrived home in joy to report the words of JFK to his family. The killers shot him in his front yard, in front of his family. It was obscene. I asked if someone would come to kill us in our yard, too.

I grew up in what was largely a segregrated world, with more safety nets. I never saw blacks as a threat, neither did my family and they told me a lot of history as the events of those days were being presented to the world through thne media, school, community meetings, and people we knew. We were being taught at school 'how the world works' in elementary school, even voting for some things, including the 1960 election in class. It was part of being a grown up, politics were.

The death of Evers and all that followed are seared into my heart and mind. All for the insanity of not allowing black people a seat at a lunch counter. or a seat on the bus or the right to vote.



I don't want to go back to that world again.