Fifty-eight years ago today, Rosa Parks, then 43-years-old, became a lightening rod for the Civil Rights Movement when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Apparently, that singular act ended racism. Yes, the Civil Rights Movement that followed Parks’ courageous act — which itself followed the courageous act of Claudette Colvin[1] — ended racism, according to a tweet by the Republican National Committee: The murders of Four Little Girls in Birmingham and Wharlest Jackson in Natchez, Mississippi weren’t racist. The assassinations of Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., Medgar Evers and El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X) were apparently not race related, at all. The contemporary effects of slavery: School-to-Prison pipelines, disparities in prison sentencing, Stop-and-Frisk, just to name a few, have nothing to do with racism because racism is over, according to the GOP. It ended here: Maybe Black America didn’t get the memo. The RNC tried to explain ...
