"I'm Going to do Something"
Given that it's Rosa Park's birthday today, I thought I'd reprise something I wrote several years ago about the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement.
Here's Pete Seeger talking to Majora Carter about some of his memories:
First of all, he said this about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Why did he start with a bus boycott? Why didn't he start with something like schools, or jobs, or voting? Couldn't a bus boycott come later?
When you face an opponent over a broad front, you don't aim at the opponent's strong points. You aim for something a little off to the side. But you win it. And having won that bus boycott...13 months it took him to do it...then he moved on to other things.
This struck me as incredibly powerful when I first heard it. I began to imagine the kinds of things facing African Americans in 1955 in the South. It wasn't just segregation - it was the almost complete denial of voting rights, it was lynchings and bombings, etc. At what point does where someone sits on a bus become the priority place to begin? As Pete Seeger said...it began at the place where the movement could likely win...and use that to build upon for the rest of the work.
Martin Luther King, Pete Seeger, Horton's daughter, Rosa Parks, and Ralph Abernathy
I just love the story Seeger tells about being in a group with Rosa Parks at the end of one of these sessions and all of them being asked what they were going to do when they went home. Rosa said she didn't know, but she'd come up with something. Boy did she!!!!!
Read More http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2015/02/im-going-to-do-something.html
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Happy Birthday to Rosa Parks!
February 4, 2015 by Erin Allen
(The following is a guest post by Lee Ann Potter, director of Educational Outreach for the Library of Congress.)
It is impossible to imagine how many birthday wishes she received in her 92 years of life, but among the items in the Rosa Parks Collection that recently arrived at the Library of Congress on a 10-year loan from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, there are hundreds of birthday messages–many from school children–sent over a span of nearly 20 years. From 1986 until her passing in 2005, scores of kindergarteners to high school seniors from across the country used the occasion of her birthday to both wish her well and to thank her for the inspirational role she played in the civil rights movement.
Their notes, drawings, songs, poems and essays reflect varying degrees of knowledge about her refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in December 1955. Some mention that it led to a year-long, city-wide boycott ending when the city of Montgomery lifted its law requiring segregation on public buses. Others, like a first grader from Wright Elementary School in Des Moines, Iowa, indicate awareness that she went to jail for her actions. In 2000, Morgan wrote, “Dear Mrs. Parks, I like you. I am sorry that you had to go to jail. Happy Birthday. Love, Morgan.”
http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2015/02/happy-birthday-to-rosa-parks/
Thanks niyad~
It is a great pic. She was so beautiful in many ways.
Beauty and Grace inside and out. She sure did do something freshwest. She sure as hell did.
Though took up education in college as a major, changed to a major in fine art. My BAFA didn't get me anywhere though it does help in what I do, furniture sales, color, fabrics and design.
Thanks calimary, I love to throw keywords into the computer and see what I can find that interests me to post. Damn I love the internet. It's amazing.
This one is courtesy of smartypants. I love what she has to say and how she says it. I also love the fact that some have been infuriated by her posts that I linked to on racism. Lol~ she hits the nail on the head every damn time!
I agree. Brava Rosa Parks! A little something sure as hell goes a long way~
I remember a lot about those years in the south. I think what hit me early on was the lack of dignity in the way poc were treated. Rosa Parks kept hers throughout the ordeal, and that bothered the racists far more than her challenge to where poc were supposed to sit on a bus. She was an amazing woman.
Ismnotwasm had a post yesterday about a new book which will deal in more depth about women in the civil rights movement and Rosa Park's activism...she was far more than just a tired lady who sat in the "wrong" seat. I am looking forward to reading it, and I hope some of us can discuss it on DU.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/125554626
K&R for the day readers. 
