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A Black History Special Edition of Uprising from the Pacifica Radio Archives featuring:

– “Women of the Civil Rights Movement” with Rosa Parks, Lorraine Hansberry, Fannie Lou Hamer and June Jordan

– “Defining Black Power” with Huey Newton, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and David Hilliard

Most historians date the beginning of the modern American civil rights movement in to December 1st 1955. That was the day when a woman by the name of Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance enforcing segregation. All that Rosa Parks did was refuse to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Her act sparked a city wide boycott, leading to a nationwide movement that eventually ended legal segregation in the US. Rosa Parks is considered the mother of the civil rights movement, and last October, at the age of 92. She was the first woman in American history to lie in state at the Capitol, an honor usually reserved for Presidents of the United States.

We spend the hour today celebrating Black History, not just because its February, but because it’s our collective history.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“I am leaving this legacy to all of you,” she said in 1988, “to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfilment of what our lives should be.” – Rosa Parks