I was just over 6 months old when Rosa Parks
struck a blow that ultimately killed Jim Crow and ended American Apartheid. It would not have happened without giants like Rosa Parks.
Nor would it have happened without a strong Federal government interceding in the South, imposing justice where there was none.
Gwen Ifill noted that Rosa Parks resisted authority at a time when Black Americans were lynched for less. Imagine that 50 years later,
Rosa Parks lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda. We may still have far to go, but we should celebrate how far we’ve come. mjh
heroine, is dead
In one of her last lengthy interviews with the Detroit Free Press in 1995, she spoke of what she would like
people to say about her after she passed away.
“I’d like people to say I’m a person who always wanted to be free and
wanted it not only for myself; freedom is for all human beings,” she said during an interview….
Chorus of Sister Rosa Parks, by The Neville Brothers
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark,
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.
STRANGE FRUIT
by Lewis Allen /
Billy Holiday
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the
southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes
and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the
crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and
bitter crop.