Monday, October 24, 2005
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks is a TRUE LEGEND - revered in Detroit (as throughout the world) for what she sparked in Montgomery, Alabama, where she contributed into changing things in a MAJOR WAY. Segregation was the norm all across the United States until little Rosa Parks refused to put up with it any longer one day, on a fateful bus ride...! One could even say that Martin Luther King Jr would have not been the man that he became (and a target for murder, eventually) had it not been for Rosa Parks! For Rosa made a tremendous amount of noise with her defiance, which caused MLK to come forth that much more virulently, that much sooner. In that, Rosa Parks resembles. somewhat, the Rosa I know; she who was an unwitting party to my enemies when we were children, exposing me due to her reckless actions! But that is most definitely another story; and it was all on a much different scale, too (the coincidence was just too much not to mention it though! Ties in also into my famous ''name theory'' - your name tells what you are; just look at your namesakes and you will see what you truly are... THAT is the theory! Try it out and you will see how eeriely on the mark it gets to be, 9 times out of 10!).DETROIT adopted Rosa Parks when her own town became hell for her and her husband after the famous bus riding incident that would start the ever-so-slow process of change in abysmal America... Of all places - DETROIT! The alleged 'Hockey Town' that rarely ever wins it all in that sport... The city whose Lions, Pistons and Tigers basically... suck. Motor City with an industrial bent that has a bad case of the bends nowadays... A sleazy town rife with crime and riddled with sickening poverty that keeps getting worse and worse by the day. Thus, a city with few heroes, if any - even though a certain Elongated Man supposedly once lived there (and that's another story - again. But speaking of which: fans of the allegedly-fabled *Justice League of America' probably all failed to recognize the cameo by a Rosa Parks lookalike in the very first issue introducing a new team that would come to be labeled as ''Justice League Detroit'' indeed. It was, alas, a disparaging nickname for the group, at the time - since these alleged fans failed to see how good it truly was or could have been. These fans are the same type of people who saw angels only in the likes of Lady Di - but never in a Mother Teresa... or in a Rosa Parks! Luckily, not all people are like that... hmm?)
The JLofA issue where Rosa Parks made an unexpected appearance -though incognito or, really, under an alias- just when the League reformed in a much more... shall we say heterogeneous way? Look for Mrs. Parks putting the moves on team leader AQUAMAN at a party that wraps up that tale! (Ok - I am kidding; it was a respectful welcoming kiss on the cheek - this being the welcoming commitee to Detroit! Check it out below... It was a most significant trivial moment though - given that the hero is blond and white... Rosa Parks was indeed the forgiving kind - that kiss was symbolic of her not holding a grudge against all whites for the acts of a very few...)Detroit may have been an odd choice to relocate to - but it was one that worked. For no, a few rotten apples do *NOT* waste the whole basket - thank God! Verily -and luckily- not all people (in Detroit or around America - and the globe) are like the insufferable bigots who would not let Rosa Parks sit where she wanted to sit in a freaking yellow bus that went up and down Cleveland Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama in the fifties. Life was simpler back then, most nostalgia-stricken souls would say - but a lot of things were simply cruder, too!
Mrs. Parks was 42 years of age when she committed her famous "act of defiance" in 1955; an act that was to change the course of American history overall and earn her the title of "mother of the civil rights movement" - for this was an act that would be reverberating throughout the world for decades! As a matter of fact, some would say it is still making waves in middle-America and in the deep south to this very day...
''At that time, Jim Crow laws, in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction, required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.'' Hence, a man would think it within his rights to ask a woman to give up her seat so that he could sit his lazy a$$ down; as long as the woman was black of course - and he was white. Truly, with details like this a core part of their history, why in blue blazes do the Good Ol' USofA think themselves so great - and the ''leaders of the FREE world'' at that?!? And HOW can they fashion themselves as such nowadays when there are still those who would agree with this behaviour even today, in the very heartland of the great nation that they are... Hmm? They need a hell of a lot more than the silly little comic-bookies featuring Captain America or the Justice League of America in order to pull wool over anyone's eyes - including the dumb as f*** brats who gobble up such cheap propaganda! For, in truth, America is rife with INJUSTICE, really! But I am digressing...
The bus in which the infamous act of intolerance took place (much more shocking to me than Rosa Parks' alleged act of ''defiance'' - which I would not have seen as such at all had I been around in 1955!) is now a museum piece, imagine that...! Another testimonial to man's folly - is it not? Of course, Jim Crow surely thought it was already quite enough to allow men and women of colour to ride in the same bus with whites, to begin with... That bus has only the value that Mrs. Parks' bravery gave it - and even the Crows of this world will admit to that, nowadays: they have no choice. However, to make that bus a sideshow attraction while bigotry lives one in the heartland is the apex of hypocrisy. Leave it to Americans to reach it - multiple times a year, month, week...!It is very doubtful that it has any bearing on Mrs. Parks departure from our cold cruel world, but her crossing over on a Monday evening reminds this luminous blogger and former wrestling fan that there is that white man from the Northeast-led WWE who has its main television program on Monday nights -RAW, on the USA network- and that he recently downgraded a young promising black talent -one Shelton Benjamin- in favor of, ultimately, an aging southern gentleman, revered veteran of the sport: the very white and platinum blond-haired Ric Flair. Note that I have been a Flair supporter for years, mind you - but I did notice he was predominantly from the South - and his Horsemen never did include a Black member either. He did ''put over'' black and white opponents equally, though. Not so with Vince McMahon - the white man from the Northeast, owner and barker of the WWE. He NEVER had a Black champion (the WCW was the only one to cross that barrier and no, I don't consider 'The Rock' black but really of mixed heritage; mulato at best) - and he has, with his treatment of Benjamin, quickly gone back on his word to ''let nothing stop (Benjamin) now''.
EVIDENCE! 
Gerry Conway and Chuck Patton were clearly trying to send a message here:
one of peace and unification of the races, in Detroit!
They disguised Rosa Parks a bit, christening her ''Mother Windom''
for the occasion, but the entire thing couldn't have been clearer:
what, with the Parks clone giving a peck on the cheek
of the closest thing to a white supremacist DC could have
(an Atlantean -remember how much the Nazis loved the
legend of Atlantis, folks- and one who belongs to the
predominantly-white Super Friendly Justice League...!)
what else does one need to acknowledge
this first-ever ''unlikely crossover'' between
reality and five-color myth?
I never got wind of what Rosa Parks herself
thought of this ''Mother Windom'' homage, alas...
Have you?
Shelton Benjamin (who, I imagine, would have been firmly supported by both Rosa Parks as MLK Jr. just like Nichelle Nichols was for her work on Star Trek!) has gone from title-contender to pre-carder faster than you can say... bigotry? Things have changed - yes or no? I say no! Flair effectively asked Benjamin to sit in the back while he took one more glorious ride on Space Mountain (his allegorical reference to his championship runs - and spotlight stealing! Among other things...)
Just like that white man was asking Rosa Parks to go sit in the back of the bus, in 1955...
It truly is Vince McMahon asking though - not Flair. However, having said all that, once again I must make clear that I am merely making luminous connections for greater understanding of all that goes around... and comes around... no need to sue me, Vince! That is, if your people are reading me at all - of course! Your people and my people can converge onto an arena somewhere, sometime, and have a free-for-all brawl for not much at all; THAT we can do, sure... if that will solve anything!
But I digress. (Tis my unruly thing to do - now sue me, won't you?)
Rosa Parks - you were one of a kind.
You are missed. No other Rosa compares or comes close to YOU!
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The original article here found was located at this URL (which will not be valid long, so...)
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20051025/D8DERS982.html
Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92
Oct 25, 1:09 AM (ET)
By BREE FOWLER
(AP) Rosa Parks smiles during a Capitol Hill ceremony where Mrs. Parks was honored
Full Image (on the blog's main page)
DETROIT (AP) - Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday evening. She was 92.
Mrs. Parks died at her home during the evening of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years.
Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."
At that time, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.
The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.
Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
U.S. Rep. John Conyers, in whose office Parks worked for more than 20 years, remembered the civil rights leader Monday night as someone whose impact on the world was immeasurable, but who never saw herself that way.
"Everybody wanted to explain Rosa Parks and wanted to teach Rosa Parks, but Rosa Parks wasn't very interested in that," he said. "She wanted to them to understand the government and to understand their rights and the Constitution that people are still trying to perfect today."
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said he felt a personal tie to the civil rights icon: "She stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her."
(AP) Rosa Parks smiles during a ceremony where she received the Congressional Medal of Freedom in...
Full Image
Speaking in 1992, Mrs. Parks said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in."
The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement.
The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.
(AP) Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick stands outside the apartment building where Rosa Lee Parks died...
Full Image
After taking her public stand for civil rights, Mrs. Parks had trouble finding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit in 1957. She worked as an aide in the Detroit office of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers from 1965 until retiring in 1988. Raymond Parks died in 1977.
Mrs. Parks became a revered figure in Detroit, where a street and middle school were named for her and a papier-mache likeness of her was featured in the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Mrs. Parks said upon retiring from her job with Conyers that she wanted to devote more time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute, incorporated in 1987, is devoted to developing leadership among Detroit's young people and initiating them into the struggle for civil rights.
"Rosa Parks: My Story" was published in February 1992. In 1994 she brought out "Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation," and in 1996 a collection of letters called "Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."
She was among the civil rights leaders who addressed the Million Man March in October 1995.
(AP) A visitor to the Henry Ford Museum looks inside the actual bus on which civil rights pioneer Rosa Prks rode...
Full Image
In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Mrs. Parks received dozens of other awards, ranging from induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor to an NAACP Image Award for her 1999 appearance on CBS'"Touched by an Angel."
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest.
"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.
"No," Parks answered.
"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.
"You may do that," Parks responded.
Mrs. Parks' later years were not without difficult moments.
In 1994, Mrs. Parks' home was invaded by a 28-year-old man who beat her and took $53. She was treated at a hospital and released. The man, Joseph Skipper, pleaded guilty, blaming the crime on his drug problem.
The Parks Institute struggled financially since its inception. The charity's principal activity - the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour taking students to the sites of key events in the civil rights movement - routinely cost more money than the institute could raise.
Mrs. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit that sought to prevent the hip-hop duo OutKast from using her name as the title of a Grammy-nominated song. In 2000, she threatened legal action against an Oklahoma man who planned to auction Internet domain name rights to .http://www.rosaparks.com
After losing the OutKast lawsuit, Reed, her attorney, said Mrs. Parks "has once again suffered the pains of exploitation." A later suit against OutKast's record company was settled out of court.
She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. Family illness interrupted her high school education, but after she married Raymond Parks in 1932, he encouraged her and she earned a diploma in 1934. He also inspired her to become involved in the NAACP.
Looking back in 1988, Mrs. Parks said she worried that black young people took legal equality for granted.
Older blacks, she said "have tried to shield young people from what we have suffered. And in so doing, we seem to have a more complacent attitude.
"We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today."
At a celebration in her honor that same year, she said: "I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die - the dream of freedom and peace."
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20051025/D8DERS982.html
Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92
Oct 25, 1:09 AM (ET)
By BREE FOWLER
(AP) Rosa Parks smiles during a Capitol Hill ceremony where Mrs. Parks was honored
Full Image (on the blog's main page)
DETROIT (AP) - Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday evening. She was 92.
Mrs. Parks died at her home during the evening of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years.
Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."
At that time, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.
The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.
Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
U.S. Rep. John Conyers, in whose office Parks worked for more than 20 years, remembered the civil rights leader Monday night as someone whose impact on the world was immeasurable, but who never saw herself that way.
"Everybody wanted to explain Rosa Parks and wanted to teach Rosa Parks, but Rosa Parks wasn't very interested in that," he said. "She wanted to them to understand the government and to understand their rights and the Constitution that people are still trying to perfect today."
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said he felt a personal tie to the civil rights icon: "She stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her."
(AP) Rosa Parks smiles during a ceremony where she received the Congressional Medal of Freedom in...
Full Image
Speaking in 1992, Mrs. Parks said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in."
The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement.
The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.
(AP) Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick stands outside the apartment building where Rosa Lee Parks died...
Full Image
After taking her public stand for civil rights, Mrs. Parks had trouble finding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit in 1957. She worked as an aide in the Detroit office of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers from 1965 until retiring in 1988. Raymond Parks died in 1977.
Mrs. Parks became a revered figure in Detroit, where a street and middle school were named for her and a papier-mache likeness of her was featured in the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Mrs. Parks said upon retiring from her job with Conyers that she wanted to devote more time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute, incorporated in 1987, is devoted to developing leadership among Detroit's young people and initiating them into the struggle for civil rights.
"Rosa Parks: My Story" was published in February 1992. In 1994 she brought out "Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation," and in 1996 a collection of letters called "Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."
She was among the civil rights leaders who addressed the Million Man March in October 1995.
(AP) A visitor to the Henry Ford Museum looks inside the actual bus on which civil rights pioneer Rosa Prks rode...
Full Image
In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Mrs. Parks received dozens of other awards, ranging from induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor to an NAACP Image Award for her 1999 appearance on CBS'"Touched by an Angel."
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest.
"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.
"No," Parks answered.
"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.
"You may do that," Parks responded.
Mrs. Parks' later years were not without difficult moments.
In 1994, Mrs. Parks' home was invaded by a 28-year-old man who beat her and took $53. She was treated at a hospital and released. The man, Joseph Skipper, pleaded guilty, blaming the crime on his drug problem.
The Parks Institute struggled financially since its inception. The charity's principal activity - the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour taking students to the sites of key events in the civil rights movement - routinely cost more money than the institute could raise.
Mrs. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit that sought to prevent the hip-hop duo OutKast from using her name as the title of a Grammy-nominated song. In 2000, she threatened legal action against an Oklahoma man who planned to auction Internet domain name rights to .http://www.rosaparks.com
After losing the OutKast lawsuit, Reed, her attorney, said Mrs. Parks "has once again suffered the pains of exploitation." A later suit against OutKast's record company was settled out of court.
She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. Family illness interrupted her high school education, but after she married Raymond Parks in 1932, he encouraged her and she earned a diploma in 1934. He also inspired her to become involved in the NAACP.
Looking back in 1988, Mrs. Parks said she worried that black young people took legal equality for granted.
Older blacks, she said "have tried to shield young people from what we have suffered. And in so doing, we seem to have a more complacent attitude.
"We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today."
At a celebration in her honor that same year, she said: "I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die - the dream of freedom and peace."
Ironically, Rosa Parks died on the 24th of October... and the 25th of October is when, in 1994, ''Sick freak Susan Smith of Union, SC, drowns her two young sons, then claims they were kidnapped by a black carjacker.''
39 years after Rosa Parks had set things in motion for a CHANGE... Susan Smith proved whitetrash bimbos down south are as racist as ever... still... today. Not to mention superficial, vain, cold-hearted...
But I digress.
39 years after Rosa Parks had set things in motion for a CHANGE... Susan Smith proved whitetrash bimbos down south are as racist as ever... still... today. Not to mention superficial, vain, cold-hearted...
But I digress.
Good Bye Rosa. We need more people like you in this world. People who will stand up for what they believe in and make a difference.
Check out the post on Rosa Parks in TLB for my comment there about her.
God Bless You (\ô/) Luce!
((HUGE HUGS))
Countess
Check out the post on Rosa Parks in TLB for my comment there about her.
God Bless You (\ô/) Luce!
((HUGE HUGS))
Countess
It's about time!
APRIL 18TH 2006...
After 50 years, Alabama pardons Rosa Parks
By Verna Gates
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - More than half a century after U.S. civil rights icon Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, the Alabama legislature on Tuesday voted to pardon her and others convicted for breaking segregation-era race laws.
The "Rosa Parks Act," approved unanimously by the state House of Representatives but opposed by three senators in the Senate, also clears the way for hundreds of other activists to wipe out their arrest records for acts of civil disobedience in the struggle for black civil rights.
The Alabama Senate revised the act to allow museums to continue to display such arrest records as well as a famous mug shot of Parks, who died last October at the age of 92.
"It is long overdue," said Thad McClammy, a Democrat who sponsored the House bill. "It will bring closure."
Hundreds of people accrued arrest records in Alabama during the turbulent civil rights struggle, which was galvanized by Parks' simple act of disobedience on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery.
Her arrest for refusing to give up her seat sparked a 381-day boycott by black residents of the bus system.
Led by Rev. Martin Luther King, then a little-known preacher, the boycott led to Supreme Court rulings forcing Montgomery to desegregate its transport system and ultimately helped end laws that separated blacks and whites in public facilities across the South.
"Mrs. Parks sat down to stand up for justice," said Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader in the Birmingham civil rights movement, who was arrested more than 30 times.
While the pardon is available to all those arrested under "Jim Crow" segregation laws, applicants have to go through a process to attain it and many may refuse.
Some activists say they need no pardon because they never did anything wrong. Others are proud of their arrest records.
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has still to sign the act into law.
APRIL 18TH 2006...
After 50 years, Alabama pardons Rosa Parks
By Verna Gates
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - More than half a century after U.S. civil rights icon Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, the Alabama legislature on Tuesday voted to pardon her and others convicted for breaking segregation-era race laws.
The "Rosa Parks Act," approved unanimously by the state House of Representatives but opposed by three senators in the Senate, also clears the way for hundreds of other activists to wipe out their arrest records for acts of civil disobedience in the struggle for black civil rights.
The Alabama Senate revised the act to allow museums to continue to display such arrest records as well as a famous mug shot of Parks, who died last October at the age of 92.
"It is long overdue," said Thad McClammy, a Democrat who sponsored the House bill. "It will bring closure."
Hundreds of people accrued arrest records in Alabama during the turbulent civil rights struggle, which was galvanized by Parks' simple act of disobedience on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery.
Her arrest for refusing to give up her seat sparked a 381-day boycott by black residents of the bus system.
Led by Rev. Martin Luther King, then a little-known preacher, the boycott led to Supreme Court rulings forcing Montgomery to desegregate its transport system and ultimately helped end laws that separated blacks and whites in public facilities across the South.
"Mrs. Parks sat down to stand up for justice," said Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader in the Birmingham civil rights movement, who was arrested more than 30 times.
While the pardon is available to all those arrested under "Jim Crow" segregation laws, applicants have to go through a process to attain it and many may refuse.
Some activists say they need no pardon because they never did anything wrong. Others are proud of their arrest records.
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has still to sign the act into law.
Feel free now to post a comment about the post-mortem pardon...
Oh... pun!
Better late than never indeed!
;)
Oh... pun!
Better late than never indeed!
;)
UPDATE
2007 -
August
Many thought Rosa Parks was the first woman to have braved the horrible status quo -
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy was the first one to do so.
She passed away in August of 2007, also at an advanced age.
Read on for more...
+++
2007 -
August
Many thought Rosa Parks was the first woman to have braved the horrible status quo -
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy was the first one to do so.
She passed away in August of 2007, also at an advanced age.
Read on for more...
+++
Desegregation pioneer dies at 90
Mon Aug 13, 10:32 AM ET
GLOUCESTER, Va. - Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman whose refusal to give up her bus seat to white passengers led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision more than a decade before Rosa Parks gained recognition for doing the same, has died at 90.
Kirkaldy died Friday at her daughter's home, said Fred Carter, director of Carter Funeral Home in Newport News.
Kirkaldy, born Irene Morgan in Baltimore in 1917, was arrested in 1944 for refusing to give up her seat on a Greyhound bus heading from Gloucester to Baltimore, and for resisting arrest.
Her case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by an NAACP lawyer named Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black justice on the high court.
The Supreme Court held in June 1946 that Virginia law requiring the races to be separated on interstate buses — even making passengers change seats during their journey to maintain separation if the number of passengers changed — was an invalid interference in interstate commerce.
At the time, the case received little attention, and not all bus companies complied with the ruling at first, but it paved the way for civil rights victories to come, including Parks' famous stand on a local bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955.
Kirkaldy also inspired the first Freedom Ride in 1947, when 16 civil rights activists rode buses and trains through the South to test the Supreme Court decision.
In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal — the second highest civilian honor in the United States.
Asked where her courage came from that day, Kirkaldy said simply: "I can't understand how anyone would have done otherwise."
She was not part of any organized movement, unlike Parks, who was an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People when she challenged segregation.
Kirkaldy, then a young mother, boarded the Greyhound bus in Hayes Store, Va., and took a seat toward the back for her ride home. She was recovering from surgery and had taken her two children to stay temporarily with her mother in Gloucester.
A few miles down the road, the driver told her to move because a white couple wanted to occupy her row.
"I said 'Well, no,'" she recalled. "That was a seat I had paid for."
Kirkaldy said she willingly paid a $100 fine for resisting arrest because she did kick the officer who tried to remove her from the bus.
"Sometimes, you are so enraged, you don't have time to be afraid," she remarked in 2000.
She lived out of the spotlight for decades after the case, earning a college degree in 1985 at age 68, and lived most of her life in New York state.
She said she didn't mind the relatively little notice her achievements brought.
"If there's a job to be done, you do it and get it over with and go on to the next thing," she told The Washington Post in 2000.
Her daughter, Brenda Bacquie, told the newspaper: "She always taught us that if you know you're right, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. It's a moral thing. ... She doesn't see herself as a hero."
+++
Post a Comment
Mon Aug 13, 10:32 AM ET
GLOUCESTER, Va. - Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman whose refusal to give up her bus seat to white passengers led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision more than a decade before Rosa Parks gained recognition for doing the same, has died at 90.
Kirkaldy died Friday at her daughter's home, said Fred Carter, director of Carter Funeral Home in Newport News.
Kirkaldy, born Irene Morgan in Baltimore in 1917, was arrested in 1944 for refusing to give up her seat on a Greyhound bus heading from Gloucester to Baltimore, and for resisting arrest.
Her case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by an NAACP lawyer named Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black justice on the high court.
The Supreme Court held in June 1946 that Virginia law requiring the races to be separated on interstate buses — even making passengers change seats during their journey to maintain separation if the number of passengers changed — was an invalid interference in interstate commerce.
At the time, the case received little attention, and not all bus companies complied with the ruling at first, but it paved the way for civil rights victories to come, including Parks' famous stand on a local bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955.
Kirkaldy also inspired the first Freedom Ride in 1947, when 16 civil rights activists rode buses and trains through the South to test the Supreme Court decision.
In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal — the second highest civilian honor in the United States.
Asked where her courage came from that day, Kirkaldy said simply: "I can't understand how anyone would have done otherwise."
She was not part of any organized movement, unlike Parks, who was an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People when she challenged segregation.
Kirkaldy, then a young mother, boarded the Greyhound bus in Hayes Store, Va., and took a seat toward the back for her ride home. She was recovering from surgery and had taken her two children to stay temporarily with her mother in Gloucester.
A few miles down the road, the driver told her to move because a white couple wanted to occupy her row.
"I said 'Well, no,'" she recalled. "That was a seat I had paid for."
Kirkaldy said she willingly paid a $100 fine for resisting arrest because she did kick the officer who tried to remove her from the bus.
"Sometimes, you are so enraged, you don't have time to be afraid," she remarked in 2000.
She lived out of the spotlight for decades after the case, earning a college degree in 1985 at age 68, and lived most of her life in New York state.
She said she didn't mind the relatively little notice her achievements brought.
"If there's a job to be done, you do it and get it over with and go on to the next thing," she told The Washington Post in 2000.
Her daughter, Brenda Bacquie, told the newspaper: "She always taught us that if you know you're right, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. It's a moral thing. ... She doesn't see herself as a hero."
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