INSPIRATION. I find myself inspired by the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine and have always been glad to see the iconizing of the Civil Rights Movement. If anything, I wish that additional figures beyond MLK, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and the Little Rock Nine were made into cultural/political icons. Why shouldn't Thurgood Marshall, Fred Shuttlesworth, the Freedom Riders, the students who did the lunch counter protests get the mythologizing treatment as well?
THE CIVIL RIGHTS LENS. The Civil Rights Movement is the most important modern window through which Americans can understand much of what's worthwhile in American history. By appropriately celebrating the Civil Rights Movement, we connect ourselves back to the fights over lynching, the work of the New England school marms celebrated by W. E. B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folks, the abolitionist movement, Jacksonian Democracy, and the American Revolution. Because we still have a living connection to the civil rights era, we're still vitally linked to the expansions of civil and political freedom associated with the figures of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
REDEMPTION. I can't get the picture up yet, but I've always been fascinated by the famous picture of Elizabeth Eckford walking toward the school with the white woman barking racial insults in the background. The picture invites us to identify with the teen-age African-American girl and to view the white woman as a kind of moral monstrosity. Part of the horrible fascination of that image for me is that I have some female relatives who could have been that snarling white woman and most of my family would have sympathized much more with her than with the young black woman walking past her.
What makes the civil rights movement so unique as a moral/political movement is that MLK and many others urge us both black and white to fully identify ourselves with both Elizabeth Eckford and fully forgive and extend a love to the snarling white woman behind her. Like the Freedom Rides, the lunch-counter sit-ins, and Rosa Park's refusal to move to the back of the bus, Elizabeth Eckford's walk represents a peak moment in American history that all of us should consider our own. But the redemption of that walk would not be complete until history extended a hand to all the snarling racists and they can somehow be represented as joining the walk towards an equal society. I've heard Joseph Lowery (still the head of the SCLC I believe) make this point in relation to the Ku Klux Klan in 1978 and I still believe there's a profound truth there.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
We NEED to celebrate Marshall more. In a history sense, he was a bad ass. Love both George and Thurgood Marshall. Maybe I should change my name?
Every once in a while you write something that appears to be thoughtful, and interesting, and I think maybe I had you pegged wrong. Then, I read you in the comments thread claimaing that Republicans are racist, sexist, and homophobic again, and realize that posts like this you must just be an accident.
The courage of those individuals you spoke of is amazing. It is inspiring to watch the events celebrating The Movement.
It is bittersweet though when, in the midst of the celebrating we have right now in Louisiana the ongoing saga of the "Jena Six" to remind us that we still have far to go. On the other hand, the protests Louisiana and on Capitol Hill have made it equally clear that the back of the bus is still out of the question.
The injustice in the case of the six African-American students from Jena, Louisiana is disgraceful, and it is unacceptable. We have come far from Jim Crow in its heyday, however this miscarriage of justice, the whole incident, especially the denial of bail for Mychal Bell is yet another outrage in a case that has been a travesty of justice.
This is another example of the institutional racism in our criminal justice system purging of voter rolls during elections, the high percentage of African-American males jailed merely for possession of or addiction to drugs shows us how much remains to be done before the United States comes close to true equality. If we are ever to overcome the lingering and ever-present racism in this nation, all of us, citizens and leaders have a duty to see that the principle of equal justice is at long last applied.
The Governor and Attorney General of Louisiana are silent. The local prosecutor is determined to see that injustice is done and that's not the worst part of this situation.
I am not an avid reader of newspapers as they rarely report real news but I did read in The Lexington Herald Leader that neo-nazi web pages have burned with denunciations of the Jena six and the demonstrators. Last week it was reported, one of these hate groups published the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the families of the "Jena Six" encouraging their members to take their twisted brand of "justice" into their own hands. Another posting on the matter flatly threatened: “Lynch the Jena 6.”
These threats by neo-Nazi white supremacy groups need to be taken seriously. These groups are heavily armed and dangerous.
Jena isn’t simply in Louisiana. As I alluded to above, injustices like these take place in our criminal justice system routinely around the nation.
Likewise militant hate groups are everywhere.(http://www.splcenter.org/index.jsp
The best way to honor Civil Rights heroes of the past is to fight the ongoing institutional racism that continues to this day.
And in this specific case, based upon the fact that a court has thrown out the charges against Mychal Bell, reexamination is in order.
todd - They did not "throw out the charges" against Bell. Not even close. They simply found that they felt he should not have been tried as an adult. There is a world of difference between reality and what you just described.
I feel no pity for someone that has a history of violent acts, Bell, and then joins up with 5 buddies to kick the snot out of 1 person. Quite simply, I do not understand why you wish to back this person.
I dare say you could not produce evidence of 1 single solitary person - black, white, or polka dotted - that has been jailed merely for an addiction to drugs, as you stated above.
You really are hysterical, in the funny Ha Ha way, and the get help kind of way.
todd - feel free to correct yourself any time now.
Todd - So, was it an honest mistake? Did you cut and paste that from somewhere else and just not proofread it? Or, did you just make it up?
Silence. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I will assume that it was an intentional lie, todd.
Post a Comment