The Nightmares Of Yesterday

Yesterday’s commemoration of the historic March on Washington should be an eye-opening reminder or a remembrance of what it was like and the horrible things that happened in 1963. To that point, did anyone notice the absence of a Republican contingent neither current elected officials nor the two living Republican past Presidents. It is clear that they were invited but declined. Instead, it has been reported that the GOP held their own commemoration, which reminds me of “Separate but Equal” like it was in 1963.  

A recap of the 1963:

• January 14 - Alabama Governor George Wallace delivers his "segregation now, segregation forever" inaugural speech, penned by Asa Carter, the founder of a KKK terrorist organization.
• April 12 – Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth and others are arrested in a Birmingham, Alabama protest for "parading without a permit".
• April 16 - Martin Luther King, Jr. issues his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
• May 2 - Thousands of African Americans, many of them children, are arrested while protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor unleashes fire hoses and police dogs on the demonstrators.
• June 12 - Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in the door of the University of Alabama to protest against integration, before stepping aside and allowing African Americans James Hood and Vivian Malone to enroll.
• President John F. Kennedy broadcasts a historic Civil Rights Address, in which he promises a Civil Rights Bill, and asks for "the kind of equality of treatment that we would want for ourselves."
• June 12 - Medgar Evers, an NAACP worker in Mississippi, is murdered by white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith.
• August 18 – James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
• August 28 - Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his "I have a dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the 250,000 people gathered for the peaceful March on Washington.
• September 15 - The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham is bombed by the KKK. Four African American girls die in the blast, sparking armed conflict between blacks and whites. Although bombings of black churches had been occurring throughout the Deep South and particularly in Birmingham since 1948, this tragic event galvanizes the Civil Rights Movement.

With regard to the Republicans not in attendance I will say it is telling! I would argue that their mindset is similar to that mindset of 1963. Remember President 43 did not attend any of the yearly NAACP Meetings during his presidency. I will digress and say that I was wrong. There was one Republican present for the fiftieth anniversary. It was Abraham Lincoln. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…