Happy Anniversary...

a reply to: seagull

This is an excellent and thoughtful thread.

The statement that struck me the most is the one about heading toward segregation again for political purposes.

Actually, I think there is a political gain in dividing us, by skin colour, gender, sexual orientation and have/have nots.

Now would the purpose of this segregation be to get the dems elected again? to promote socialism/communism

what - what does everyone else think the purpose it?

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

To sow instability among the population and leave them questioning each other instead of their leaders. With half the country looking one way, and half looking the other, fewer and fewer people are looking ahead to a place where we can once again come together and work towards a greater goal.

That, or the Reptilians are coming to eat us all and will use their metamorphic camouflage abilities to sow dissent amongst both sides of racially divided war that will weaken us as a whole.

Definitely one of the two.

EDIT:
Oh, and the answer was Claudette Colvin.

a reply to: Thorneblood

I just looked up Claudette colvin. I am surprised. Some days are just more stuff you didn't know.

a reply to: Thorneblood

I think her name was Claudette Colvin (sp?)? Been a while since I first heard of her. Along with her fellow plaintiffs in Browder vs Gayle, they were respectively, Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith and Jeanetta Reese.

Browder vs Gayle was the Supreme court case that found that Montgomery's bus system was in violation of the Constitution by enforcing segregation.

ETA: Oh, I see you gave the answer already...

This is a stark reminder that getting embroiled in political battles can cause truly remarkable people, events and dates to pass by unnoticed. As a poster with a MLK quote in my signature, this resonates as particularly true.

Civil rights as we know them today would not be the same if people like Rosa Parks, CSK and Dr. King himself had instead been involved in chasing the political sensation of the week. They rose above that, and considerably advanced the cause of human rights in the United States through self-less action and commitment.

The civil rights activists of their time and even before, to the soldiers we've lost in the name of freedom and our rights has given us a gift. It is up to us to maintain that liberty and pursuit of justice, and ensure its existence for the next generation whom we will pass the torch.

a reply to: seagull

Whoa what a coincidence!

The Ernie Davis thread I wrote today was by complete randon chance on this anniversary?

Amazing!

That's like super meaningful for me because I didn't know. It's like the Spirits really led me!

By the way, I got to meet Rosa Parks in Washington DC when I was a kid in like 97 or 98. She was super cool!

a reply to: JBurns

Yes. We're so concerned about today, and the things happening today, that we forget that others traveled this very same road.

Only they traveled it before it was a road. When discrimination was codified law of the land. Yet some would toss away all that has been gained by those who went before, and for what? Petty vengeance? Against people who are long dead and forgotten. Or worse, ignored. Grandiose statues of imperishable marble to men that we know nothing of, and care even less, and if we did, we'd be horrified to even be associated with them.

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Percy Shelley

Are they seeking to reestablish, for their own foolish purposes, segregation.

Are they really going to try to emulate George Wallace?




If so, I hope that some day they'll do what he did late in his life, and repudiate, or at least, regret his stance.

I discovered, as a young man of 22, working in the commercial fishing industry, working with people from every walk of life imaginable, who featured every ethnicity and race this Earth has to offer, and I was, along the way, exposed to a vast plethora of religious/spiritual views, as well. As you may well imagine, it was a wake up call for this, as it turned out, very sheltered young man...

After the shock wore off, I reveled in it...to this day I can swear in 8 or 9 different languages from all over the world.... I also learned that underneath, where it really counts, we're much more alike than we are different. Two of my best friends for my first couple of years in Alaska was an older man from Eritrea in Africa, and another older man who was from Cambodia, and had survived the Killing Fields--his family didn't. Their English wasn't the greatest, and my Cambodian and Tigrinya (the most widely spoken dialect in Eritrea), were sorely lacking. Yet we managed just fine. Common ground in dumb jokes, rude noises, and drinking to excess was reached...by the time we lost contact, they were men I would trust with my life, and the lives of others. I may not have seen them for nigh on thirty years, but they remain, and always will, my friends.

Others come quickly to mind. The little old Vietnamese lady and her husband who constantly tried to feed me. "You too skinny, the girls not like that..." was her favored ploy. That, and excellent food.

Two former Marines, one American, the other Korean, who taught me how to watch my back and the backs of others.

Freddie and Lisa, from Manila, former guerrilla fighters who fought against the Americans, then the Japanese. Freddie was 70 years old, if he was a day...Lisa, older than that. Yet they could work boys and girls, fifty years younger, into the ground. I learned what a days work really is from those two. Still miss 'em to this day...

So many people who took the time to take this young, admittedly very stupid, boy, and help transform into what I am today, for good or for ill.

Little vignettes like this is what people are, seemingly, wanting to throw away by self-segregating themselves away from that which is different--or scary. They're scared.

I can, in a way, relate to that. That first plane ride into the fishing grounds of Alaska was, to put it bluntly, terrifying. Even the folks who looked like me, were so very different. Once I let go of that fear, I thrived.

I look back on that time, thirty plus years ago, and I wonder how I'd have turned out if I hadn't let go of that fear/uncertainty...? I like to think I'd have been OK, but I know better.

How do you get folks to let go of that fear? They need to, because fear can so easily turn into hatred. Hatred that we're seeing expressed far, far too often from all sides of this needless, and ultimately futile, nonsense.

"Look upon my works, you mighty, and despair." Yet, ultimately, nothing remains save dust. What point is there to hate? Make no mistake, that's what it is. Hate, rooted in fear.

a reply to: TiredofControlFreaks

The purpose? There may be, I suppose, a dark and sinister purpose behind it all...

But I think it's more, or maybe less, than that. It's simply fear. Fear of that which is different, couple that with perceived, and actual, wrongs--and you get what we see today.

Fear turning to hatred. Not just from one side against another, but from all sides towards everyone else.

Pogo said it best...

"We have met the enemy, and he is...us."

a reply to: seagull

I stand behind Trump, the person who would have given Rosa Parks his seat.