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Posts tagged as “Alabama”

Rosa Parks' Statue Unveiled Today on Capitol Hill

By goodblacknews on February 27, 2013
 
Black History Month is coming to a close with a historic moment honoring the late Rosa Parks.  The unveiling for Parks’ statue at Capitol Hill’s Statuary Hall took place today.  President Barack Obama spoke at the ceremony.
“This morning, we celebrate a seamstress slight in stature but mighty in courage,” the president said. “In a single moment, with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world.”
Parks is the first African-American woman to have a statue placed in the hall.  “As the first African-American woman to be honored in Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol, Mrs. Parks’ dedication to ensuring no human being is treated like a second class citizen in this country will be remembered and discussed for generations to come,” said Congressional Black Caucus Chair Marcia Fudge. 
Each state donates two statues of their most prominent citizens to Statuary Hall. The 109th Congress authorized this tribute in 2005.   Parks will represent the state of Alabama, where she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and became the “mother of the civil rights movement.”
Related Articles:  Rosa Parks Stamp on American History
Rosa Parks Statue to be Added to Statuary Hall on Capitol Hill
original article via bet.com

Alabama Legislation Proposing to Finally Exonerate Scottsboro Boys

By goodblacknews on February 5, 2013

scottsboro(3)MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — In 1931, Alabama wanted to execute the black Scottsboro Boys because two white women claimed they were gang-raped. Now, state officials are trying to exonerate them in a famous case from the segregated South that some consider the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.
Two Democratic and two Republican legislators unveiled proposals Monday for the legislative session starting Tuesday. A resolution labels the Scottsboro Boys as “victims of a series of gross injustice” and declares them exonerated. A companion bill gives the state parole board the power to issue posthumous pardons.
Republican Sen. Arthur Orr of Decatur said Alabama can’t change history, “but that does not that mean we should not take steps today to address things that we can here in the 21st century that might not have been as they should have been.”
Gov. Robert Bentley’s press secretary, Jennifer Ardis, said he supports the effort to pardon the Scottsboro Boys and believes “it’s time to right this wrong.”
Sheila Washington, founder of the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center in Scottsboro, started organizing the effort after the museum opened in 2010.

Rosa Parks' Stamp on American History

By goodblacknews on February 4, 2013

George Bridges/Getty Images
Today, to honor the Feb. 4 centennial of the birth of Rosa Parks, the United States Postal Service has issued a Rosa Parks stamp. Last year, a stone carving of Parks was added to the National Cathedral. In 2005, she became the first woman and second African American to lie in honor in the nation’s Capitol and, through a special act of Congress, a statue of her was ordered placed in the Capitol.
Yet these tributes to Rosa Parks rest on a narrow and distorted vision of her legacy. As the story goes, a quiet Montgomery, Ala., seamstress with a single act challenged Southern segregation, catapulted a young Martin Luther King Jr. into national leadership and ushered in the modern civil rights movement. Parks’ memorialization promotes an improbable children’s story of social change — one not-angry woman sat down, the country was galvanized and structural racism was vanquished.
This fable diminishes the extensive history of collective action against racial injustice and underestimates the widespread opposition to the black freedom movement, which for decades treated Parks’ political activities as “un-American.” Most important, it skips over the enduring scourge of racial inequality in American society — a reality that Parks continued to highlight and challenge — and serves contemporary political interests that treat racial injustice as a thing of the past.

Rosa Parks Statue to be Added to Statuary Hall on Capitol Hill

By goodblacknews on January 23, 2013
Rosa Parks Statue Will Be Added to Capitol Later This Year

Civil Rights Activist Rosa Parks (Photo: CBS/Landov)

The late Rosa Parks continues to make history. Her likeness will be depicted in a statue later this year at Capitol Hill’s Statuary Hall, making her the first African-American woman to achieve the mark.

Each of the 50 states donates two statues of their most prominent citizens to Statuary Hall. Rosa Parks will be representative of the state of Alabama where she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and became the “mother of the civil rights movement.”  Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) announced the statue would be revealed in late 2013. As chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, he is also in charge of artwork in the Capitol.
Congress passed an order to place the statue in the hall in 2005. In 2008, the National Endowment for the Arts announced a design competition calling artists to submit designs for the statue.  The U.S. Postal Service is also commemorating the life of Rosa Parks. On Feb. 4, the postal service is issuing a special “Historic Forever” stamp in honor of Parks’ 100th birthday.
Detroit will be the first city to sell the Rosa Parks stamp.
 article by Natelege Whaley via bet.com

R.I.P. James Hood, Student Activist Who Fought Segregation at University of Alabama

By goodblacknews on January 21, 2013
FILE - In this June 9, 1963 file photo, James A. Hood and Vivian J. Malone of Alabama pose in New York. Alabama Gov. George Wallace said he would personally bar them from registering at the University of Alabama despite a restraining order. (AP Photo/John Lindsay, File)
In this June 9, 1963 file photo, James A. Hood and Vivian J. Malone of Alabama pose in New York. Alabama Gov. George Wallace said he would personally bar them from registering at the University of Alabama despite a restraining order. (AP Photo/John Lindsay, File)

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — One of the first black students who enrolled at the University of Alabama a half century ago in defiance of racial segregation has died. James Hood of Gadsden was 70.  Officials at Adams-Buggs Funeral Home in Gadsden said they are handling arrangements for Hood, who died Thursday.
Then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace made his infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door” in a failed effort to prevent Hood and Vivian Malone from registering for classes at the university in 1963.  Hood and Malone were accompanied by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach when they were confronted by Wallace as they attempted to enter the university’s Foster Auditorium to register for classes and pay fees.

Born On This Day in 1891: Noted Author Zora Neale Hurston

By goodblacknews on January 7, 2013

Zora Neale Hurston birthday
Writer, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston (pictured) was one of the most-outstanding authors that emerged from the Harlem Renaissance. Over the course of four novels, an autobiography, and dozens of published writings, Hurston has been an inspiration for distinguished writers, such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, and countless others.
Hurston was the fifth of eight children born to her parents, John and Lucy Ann, in the small town of Notasulga in Alabama. The family uprooted when she was just a toddler, making their new home in Eatonville, Fla. Her father, a preacher, would become mayor of the town, which was one of the first all-black incorporated cities in the United States. After the death of her school teacher mother in 1904, her father remarried and she was sent to boarding school in nearby Jacksonville. Hurston was later expelled after her father stopped paying the tuition.