Track 3 from Outkast's Aquemini
What’s up e’rybody,
So now I actually need the extra hour of sleep, or just to turn back the clock an hour, and I can’t do it. Dang. Anyway, I hope everybody’s ready to get the week started off right, hope you guys went to church, or if ya couldn’t make it, you studied and meditated on a lil’somethin’. I’m actually over here working on “Roses Revolt”, which is supposed to be a poem about continuing the legacy of working towards civil rights, something that as a nation we’ve slipped on the past few decades. As I’m writing this, I’m watching the 11 o’ clock news, where my favorite opportunist Al Sharpton is speaking on behalf of the departed Rosa Parks. They cut back to the newsroom, where they say the words ‘mother of the Civil Rights Movement’. No problem there, right? Not so fast, my friend…my uncle has a little problem with that. He’s a high school history teacher that knows a lot about…well, history, so he gives some pretty good points about why she can’t be called MotCRM. Ok, now, he didn’t pull a Cedric in Barbershop and say Rosa didn’t do jack; he actually said she’s the ‘modern-day mother of the CRM’, but to call her ‘the mother’ does a great injustice to activists that fought to weaken the barriers that Ms. Parks and MLK would ultimately do a number on. So my uncle brings up:
Plessy vs. Ferguson
(Synopsis courtesy of http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/post-civilwar/plessy.html)
On June 7, 1892, a 30-year-old colored shoemaker named Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was only one-eighths black and seven-eighths white, but under Louisiana law, he was considered black and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. Plessy went to court and argued, in Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The judge at the trial was John Howard Ferguson, a lawyer from Massachusetts who had previously declared the Separate Car Act "unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states". In Plessy's case, however, he decided that the state could choose to regulate railroad companies that operated only within Louisiana. He found Plessy guilty of refusing to leave the white car. Plessy appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which upheld Ferguson's decision. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard Plessy's case and found him guilty once again.
Parks not the first to be arrested for refusing to move on the bus
(Excerpt from this site)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051025/news_1n25parks.html
Her arrest was the answer to prayers for the Women's Political Council, which was set up in 1946 in response to the mistreatment of black bus riders, and for E.D. Nixon, a leading advocate of equality for blacks in Montgomery.
Blacks had been arrested, and even killed, for disobeying bus drivers. They had begun to build a case around a 15-year-old girl's arrest in March 1955 for refusing to give up her seat, and Parks had been among those raising money for the girl's defense. But when they learned that the teenager was pregnant, they decided that she was an unsuitable symbol for their cause.
I mean, I knew about the Plessy case, but the story with the pregnant young lady is new to me. I learned two things from this conversation with my uncle…one, we really didn’t learn jack in high school, and two, Lord knows we need to know stuff for ourselves…and the only way to do that is to pick up a book and not only read, but read in-depth to gain knowledge and understanding. Big up, Unc.
That being said, Rosa Parks sparked a chain of events that rocked this nation, and all from a genuine act of defiance against something she knew was wrong. History tries to paint her as a women who was ‘just tired’, someone who didn’t know any better than not to sit in the ‘whites only’ area. Gibberish. Parks knew the stakes and I appreciate what the beautiful woman did. I just have the good sense to appreciate all the other ‘body blows’ Jim Crow took before Rosa Parks ‘gut-punched’ that behind, and MLK wrecked shop after that. Oh yeah, and speaking of MLK, look up A. Philip Randolph…he tried Marching on Washington before MLK…look up some of this stuff, ya’ll…I’m telling you, knowledge sparks a revolution in all of us. When we know what’s going on, I truly believe that it inspires us to do better.
Oh yeah, for those of you that were worried about Jig (writer of Romancexpress), dude is doing quite well, as well as to be expected I say. At the homegoing for his mother, he actually took some parts from ‘the Melinda Parade’ and used that in some of what he said about his moms (to read the whole thing, click the link up top that says Romancexpress), and just to see him up there talking about his moms like that in the midst of what was going on made me tear up, I ain’t gonna lie. (And those of you who read ‘the Melinda Parade’ in its entirety, got dang it’s nothing like hearing it live, man.) I also know where others and myself fed off his strength on that day; he may need us down the road. So we’re here. Jig, you and Duhon take care.
The Good Doctor
So now I actually need the extra hour of sleep, or just to turn back the clock an hour, and I can’t do it. Dang. Anyway, I hope everybody’s ready to get the week started off right, hope you guys went to church, or if ya couldn’t make it, you studied and meditated on a lil’somethin’. I’m actually over here working on “Roses Revolt”, which is supposed to be a poem about continuing the legacy of working towards civil rights, something that as a nation we’ve slipped on the past few decades. As I’m writing this, I’m watching the 11 o’ clock news, where my favorite opportunist Al Sharpton is speaking on behalf of the departed Rosa Parks. They cut back to the newsroom, where they say the words ‘mother of the Civil Rights Movement’. No problem there, right? Not so fast, my friend…my uncle has a little problem with that. He’s a high school history teacher that knows a lot about…well, history, so he gives some pretty good points about why she can’t be called MotCRM. Ok, now, he didn’t pull a Cedric in Barbershop and say Rosa didn’t do jack; he actually said she’s the ‘modern-day mother of the CRM’, but to call her ‘the mother’ does a great injustice to activists that fought to weaken the barriers that Ms. Parks and MLK would ultimately do a number on. So my uncle brings up:
Plessy vs. Ferguson
(Synopsis courtesy of http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/post-civilwar/plessy.html)
On June 7, 1892, a 30-year-old colored shoemaker named Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was only one-eighths black and seven-eighths white, but under Louisiana law, he was considered black and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. Plessy went to court and argued, in Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The judge at the trial was John Howard Ferguson, a lawyer from Massachusetts who had previously declared the Separate Car Act "unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states". In Plessy's case, however, he decided that the state could choose to regulate railroad companies that operated only within Louisiana. He found Plessy guilty of refusing to leave the white car. Plessy appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which upheld Ferguson's decision. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard Plessy's case and found him guilty once again.
Parks not the first to be arrested for refusing to move on the bus
(Excerpt from this site)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051025/news_1n25parks.html
Her arrest was the answer to prayers for the Women's Political Council, which was set up in 1946 in response to the mistreatment of black bus riders, and for E.D. Nixon, a leading advocate of equality for blacks in Montgomery.
Blacks had been arrested, and even killed, for disobeying bus drivers. They had begun to build a case around a 15-year-old girl's arrest in March 1955 for refusing to give up her seat, and Parks had been among those raising money for the girl's defense. But when they learned that the teenager was pregnant, they decided that she was an unsuitable symbol for their cause.
I mean, I knew about the Plessy case, but the story with the pregnant young lady is new to me. I learned two things from this conversation with my uncle…one, we really didn’t learn jack in high school, and two, Lord knows we need to know stuff for ourselves…and the only way to do that is to pick up a book and not only read, but read in-depth to gain knowledge and understanding. Big up, Unc.
That being said, Rosa Parks sparked a chain of events that rocked this nation, and all from a genuine act of defiance against something she knew was wrong. History tries to paint her as a women who was ‘just tired’, someone who didn’t know any better than not to sit in the ‘whites only’ area. Gibberish. Parks knew the stakes and I appreciate what the beautiful woman did. I just have the good sense to appreciate all the other ‘body blows’ Jim Crow took before Rosa Parks ‘gut-punched’ that behind, and MLK wrecked shop after that. Oh yeah, and speaking of MLK, look up A. Philip Randolph…he tried Marching on Washington before MLK…look up some of this stuff, ya’ll…I’m telling you, knowledge sparks a revolution in all of us. When we know what’s going on, I truly believe that it inspires us to do better.
Oh yeah, for those of you that were worried about Jig (writer of Romancexpress), dude is doing quite well, as well as to be expected I say. At the homegoing for his mother, he actually took some parts from ‘the Melinda Parade’ and used that in some of what he said about his moms (to read the whole thing, click the link up top that says Romancexpress), and just to see him up there talking about his moms like that in the midst of what was going on made me tear up, I ain’t gonna lie. (And those of you who read ‘the Melinda Parade’ in its entirety, got dang it’s nothing like hearing it live, man.) I also know where others and myself fed off his strength on that day; he may need us down the road. So we’re here. Jig, you and Duhon take care.
The Good Doctor
posted by The Good Doctor at 3:50 AM
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