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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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November 03, 2005
Rosa Parks Funeral
Rosa Parks was laid to rest on Thursday, November 3 of 2005.
But first, the mother of the modern civil rights movement had to have a proper send off, a seven hour funeral in Detroit. Yowsa! That's a long danged service for anyone.
Then again, she wasn't just anyone. Rosa Parks was the chosen symbol, and the last living major civil rights leader of her generation. Her death marks the pretty much official passing of that critical generation of the civil rights movement.
She seems to have been one of the cleanest and least personally tarnished characters of her movement. No dark demons in her closet like in so many other leaders of all races, from JFK to MLK. It's good thing to have a few leaders who are pretty unambiguously good, who don't have a lot of skeletons in the closet that you have to carefully overlook. Heroes this clean are rare. We should appreciate them.
Understandably, all kinds of folks wanted to pay respects. The president pretty much had to show up and say a few nice words. Everybody wants to get in a few words.
The upside of this seven hours was fine music. Hearing Aretha Franklin sing will be an adequate payoff for a lot of sitting through speeches.
But of course there had to be some political hackery at work. Couldn't miss a big chance like this. Hey, politicians are only human.
Of course, the most human of all is Bill Clinton. Our first black president said:
I remember as if it were yesterday that fateful day 50 years ago. I was a nine-year-old Southern white boy who rode a segregated bus every single day of my life. I sat in the front. Black folk sat in the back. When Rosa showed us that black folks didn't have to sit in the back anymore, two of my friends and I who strongly approved of what she had done decided we didn't have to sit in the front anymore. It was just a tiny gesture by three ordinary kids, but that tiny gesture was repeated over and over again, millions and millions of times in the hearts and minds of children, their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents, proving that she did help to set us all free.
This is SO Bill Clinton. It so becomes the story of Bill Clinton's virtue. Oh My God. And are we supposed to believe any such things actually ever happened, or should we just assume that Clinton made this little anecdote up wholecloth?
Still, that's perhaps less cheesy than Al Sharpton's funeral demagoguery. This was a once in a lifetime kind of chance for him, and he was obviously going to make hay while the sun was shinging:
I heard somebody say Jim Crow is who she fought and Jim Crow is still around. But Jim Crow is old. That's not who I'm mindful of today. The problem is Jim Crow has sons. Cheers.
One we gotta battle is James Crow Jr. Esq. He's a little more educated. He's a little slicker. He's a little more polished. But the results are the same. He doesn't put you in the back of the bus. He just puts referendums on the ballot to end affirmative action when you can't go to school. He doesn't call you a racial name, he just marginalizes your existence. He doesn't tell you that he's set against you, he sets up institutional racism. Where you have a nation respond looking for weapons in Iraq that are not there but can't see a hurricane in Louisiana that is there. Cheers. James Crow Jr. Esquire, that's who we gotta fight.
But don't think Jesse's gonna let Sharpton outdemagogue him, not here baby. Jesse Jackson said that Bush has now "put forth an anti-Rosa Parks judge." See, Dubya and Alito hate Rosa Parks. Obviously.
Still and all though, this looks like a pretty fair farewell to the last big icon of the era.
Put it this way, they didn't cheese this up anything NEAR the infamous Paul Wellstone funeral.
Let us end this consideration properly though- back on Rosa Parks. Let us close by meditating for a moment on an image of her glory:
"Mother Parks, take your rest. You have certainly earned it," said the presiding Bishop Charles Ellis III of Greater Grace Temple.
posted by Al at 11/03/2005 10:58:00 PM
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