Tag: E.D. Nixon

Rosa Parks is a central figure in the 20th century movement for Black lives, both before and after she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger the evening of Dec. 1, 1955. Her political activism began in Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1930s and continued after her family’s move to Detroit, Michigan, in 1957. Seventy years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Trump administration is hard at work erasing the history of the immense struggle Black America has waged for freedom.

Feb. 4, 2013, marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Louise MaCauley Parks in Tuskegee, Alabama. Parks was born in the segregated South, where African Americans were subjected to daily humiliations aimed at maintaining the system of exploitation and national oppression which grew out of slavery and the failure of reconstruction.

This year marks the 33rd anniversary of Black August, the annual commemoration of the liberation struggle of African people inside the United States. The month of celebration and reflection was initiated by political prisoners, many of whom were members of the Black Panther Party and the Republic of New Africa, two of the main revolutionary organizations that emerged during the late 1960s.

Although America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution are premised on the principles of democracy, the historical treatment of America’s citizens of color is replete with racial dichotomies. Today’s youth need to know that Dr. King was only 25 when he began to fight back with the year-long Montgomery bus boycott.