No white enough to be civil rights hero?!

From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History

Excerpt:

“Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn’t the case at all,” Ms. Colvin said in an animated interview at a diner near her apartment in the Parkchester section of the Bronx. “Maybe by telling my story — something I was afraid to do for a long time — kids will have a better understanding about what the civil rights movement was about.”

Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. Somehow, as Mrs. Parks became one of Time Magazine’s 100 most important people of the 20th century, and streets and schools were named after her, Ms. Colvin managed to let go of any bitterness. After Ms. Colvin was arrested, Mrs. Parks, a seasoned N.A.A.C.P. official, sometimes let her spend the night at her apartment. Ms. Colvin remembers her as a reserved but kindly woman who fixed her snacks of peanut butter on Ritz crackers.

“My mother told me to be quiet about what I did,” Ms. Colvin recalled. “She told me: ‘Let Rosa be the one. White people aren’t going to bother Rosa — her skin is lighter than yours and they like her.’ ”

Comment: Where's Jesse Jackson when you need him!

The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative (MoCRI)

George Will: Fairness on the ballot

Excerpt:

The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative (MoCRI) would amend that state's constitution to say: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting."

...

The phrase "affirmative action" came into vogue in the years after the 1976 Democratic platform endorsed "compensatory opportunity." That obfuscating phrase appeared immediately after the platform said "we must insure that all citizens are treated equally before the law." Advocates of affirmative action have long denied that it involves racial preferences. Now Missouri is insisting that a ban on such preferences would eliminate all affirmative action.


Comment: Needed in every state! The crux is this phrase: "or grant preferential treatment to"

Remembering MLK

Letter From a Birmingham Jail

Comment: These is no except of the letter - readers are encouraged to click through and read it in its entirety. I'm not old enough to remember much about Martin Luther King, but I am old enough to have a knowledge of the gross racial injustices on the black race. I witnessed first hand the "colored" rest rooms and the "colored" drinking fountains. I remember at a Junior High class end of year party that negros* were not permitted to attend a swim event. Reading MLK's Letter From a Birmingham Jail is an appropriate way to remember him this day! (* as they were then called!)