Motley Moose – Archive

August 28th was the final day of a week-long call to action by Rev. William Barber, his call for a  Moral Week of Action.

The topic was Voting Rights and was marked by a rally encouraging people to vote their dreams, not their fears.

(Note: Reverend Barber speaks at 11:27)

More video from the rally and all 7 days of the Moral Week of Action can be found here: Livestream

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The date August 28th was chosen because it was the date in 1955 that a 14 year old black boy, Emmitt Till, was murdered in Mississippi for speaking to a white woman. His murder galvanized the Civil Rights Movement and inspired Rosa Parks to protest in Montgomery AL and was also the day that Martin Luther King led the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and shared his dream.

Transcript: “I Have A Dream”

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It sometimes takes years to correct or amend what we think we know as “history”, especially when simplistic themes become part of the conventional wisdom.  For far too long what we get taught about the civil rights movement in the United States has been packaged with a focus on Martin Luther King Jr (who is certainly also misrepresented) and a few other male leaders.  Often the role of women in the movement is ignored, or trivialized.  Representations of Rosa Parks as a woman who was tired and sat down on a bus in Montgomery sparking the Montgomery Boycott, led by King, in no way tell us the real story of Rosa Parks, or of the other women who were key in the movement.  Her history of activism before the bus incident was for many reasons obscured.  But no longer.

The good news is that at the same time Rosa Parks is being honored by being immortalized on a Forever stamp from the U.S. Postal Service, an in-depth study of Parks has also been released which will go a long way towards correcting history.