Tag Archives: Rosa Parks

national news

Trump on Douglass: He did an ‘amazing job’

Donald J. Trump opened the White House’s commemoration of Black History Month in a most bizarre manner.

He said this today about Frederick Douglass, the 19th-century hero of the effort to abolish slavery in the United States and some other great Americans:

ā€œI am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things, Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody whoā€™s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and millions more black Americans who made America what it is today. Big impact.ā€

Huh? Amazing job? Big impact? Some of those who heard the president refer to Douglass as some “who’s done an amazing job” are wondering if Trump realizes that Douglass died in 1895.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Trump-update-He-praises-amazing-job-by-10900531.php

When I hear the president refer to these historic figures as if they are contemporaries, I get this uneasy sense that Trump has no idea about whom he is speaking, that heĀ has no clue about the struggle they endured and pain they suffered.

Am I the only American who is baffled beyond belief about the president’s seeming utter ignorance of history?

national news

Rosa Parks: an American icon

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Sixty years ago today, a 42-year-old woman became an American hero, an icon.

She might not have known at the moment of her heroic act that’s how she’d be remembered, but that’s what happened.

Rosa Parks was riding on a public bus in Montgomery, Ala. The bus was crowded and Parks was sitting while some passengers were standing. One of them told the bus driver to order Parks to stand up, to give her eat to him. She refused.

Parks was African-American; the passenger who demanded her seat was a white male. One did do such things in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955.

Parks was arrested, booked into jail.

At that moment a middle-age woman took her place among the legions of Americans who fought for equal rights for all citizens.

She would lead a bus boycott of the Montgomery transit system. Parks would become the face of bravery in the fight against racial discrimination.

She had grown tired, she said, of “giving in.”

On that day in a capital city of one Dixie’s states, she didn’t give in. Six decades later,Ā the nation still salutes her bravery.

Rosa Parks wasn’t a gifted orator. One didn’t hear her make compelling speeches before monstrous crowds, a la Martin Luther King Jr. No, all she had to do was simply be there.

Parks made an appearance in Amarillo; I believe it was the late 1990s. My wife and I felt compelled toĀ see and hear her. The meeting room at the Civic Center was packed.

Rosa Parks was introduced. She strode to the microphone. ParksĀ saidĀ some truly forgettable things and then sat down. It didn’t matter one single bit that Parks didn’t stir our souls. Just seeing her — being in the same room with her — was enough for any of us present that day.

Parks died in 2005. Her courage will live forever.

 

legal news, national news, political news

Race enters Lynch debate over AG vote

I didn’t predict it would happen, but the debate over when to vote on the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as the next U.S. attorney general has taken an unsurprising turn.

The issue of race has entered this debate, as Lynch is the first African-American woman ever nominated to head the Justice Department.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/dick-durbin-loretta-lynch-back-of-bus-116180.html?hp=t1_r

The introduction was made by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who said the delays in voting on Lynch’s confirmation has forced the nominee to “sit at the back of the bus.” Durbin’s reference, of course, was to the great Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who famously refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in the 1950s.

To my mind, the issue more about partisan politics than it is about race and Durbin should not have gone there during his Senate floor speech.

Durbin drew the expected criticism from Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the Senate’s lone black Republican, who accused Durbin of being a race-baiter.

ā€œIt is helpful to have a long memory and to remember that Durbin voted against Condoleezza Rice during the 40th anniversary of the March [on Selma]. So I think, in context, itā€™s just offensive that we have folks who are willing to race bait on such an important issue as human trafficking,ā€ Scott said. ā€œSometimes people use race as an issue that is hopefully going to motivate folks for their fight. But what it does, is it infuriates people.ā€

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is wrong to hold up the Lynch vote. She needs to be confirmed and the Justice Department needs to get refocused exclusively on its job, which is to enforce federal law.

I just wish we could have kept the race argument out of this so we can stick instead to the raw political gamesmanship that the GOP leadership is playing while delaying Lynch’s confirmation vote.