Message to Rosa Parks - "We're sorry"

[undergroundrailroad]

Rosa Parks getting her finger prints taken

Wednesday, April 19, 2006 · Last updated 9:07 a.m. PT

Montgomery apologizes to Rosa Parks

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The City Coucil has a message for late civil rights icon Rosa Parks and other blacks who were mistreated in Montgomery during the 1950s: We're sorry.

The majority-white council voted unanimously Tuesday to make a formal apology to Parks, who died in October, and four women who filed a federal lawsuit that resulted in court orders mandating the desegregation of city buses.

The council's resolution also apologized to "all others who suffered the same indignities" as Parks.

Parks was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus to a white man. The arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and led to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a national civil rights leader.

[kitkatrose]

1. Too bad they couldn't do that while she was still alive.

:(

[undergroundrailroad]

2. I was thinking the exact same thing!

:hi:

[Swamp Rat]

4. yep

:eyes:

[fortyfeetunder]

5. Too late, to say I'm $orry

Maybe it was because of fear this would co$t the powers that be to make the apology while Ms. Parks, etc, while alive....

[bobbieinok]

7. IMO, many people operate on the belief 'the only good black is a dead

black.'

I'm white and was decisively affected by MLK's life and work. It infuriates me every year on MLK day when many act as if MLK gave his 'I have a dream' speech and white America said 'Oh, you're so right; we're sorry, we'll change right now.'

It shocked me when for a speech I checked the dates and discovered that the Birmingham church bomb that killed 4 black girls occured less than a month after his speech. And of course MLK was killed some years after this 'nation changing speech.'

I was a young adult at the time of the Civil Rights Movement and remember well that MLK was HATED and DESPISED and FEARED. IMO, the only reason many whites say anything good about MLK is because he's safely dead. They sure don't have any positive things to say about any black man or woman who's alive and working for improvement, now do they??????

[Brewman_Jax]

3. I'm surprised that they bothered at all

after all, apologies are relatively easy and require little effort. Making substantive changes is another matter.

[Zookeeper]

6. Didn't Rosa Parks die less than a year ago?

They couldn't have managed an apology earlier?