WORLD NEWS TRUST: You And The International Civil Rights Museum (T.P. McWhorter)

[Tace]

T.P. McWhorter

(World News Trust) -- About once a year, and I am remiss to not remind us all of this more often than once a year, I think about the International Civil Rights Museum on Elm St., in Greensboro, North Carolina. I am remiss because this museum has been an idea and has remained an idea only for many years. That fact alone shows that Greensboro and the state of North Carolina, and for that matter, the U.S. government which funds most museums, stands on a position that a civil rights museum is not worth funding.

Even the chancellor of Germany recently spoke in Israel and apologized for the way Germany acted under Hitler and personally apologized to the people whose families were affected and also made comments saying that the people who helped those being persecuted were right to stand up when they did to help the downtrodden. This is something that neither the state of North Carolina, nor the leaders of Greensboro, have done to make the International Civil Rights Museum a reality.

Feb. 1, 1960, an event that changed America, thankfully, occurred in Greensboro, N.C.. Four young black men sat down at the "whites only" counter at a Woolworth's on Elm St. and were not served food even though they were hungry. There was no confrontation by the store management, but there was also no food served to the four men. The four men stayed, and sat and did not leave and this event became the "sit in movement" This is significant because it was the defining moment in which blacks stood up to the ridiculous segregation of their people for the right to eat and have the same rights as any other ethnic group in America. Their standing up by sitting down was a smack in the face of the racial intolerance that was rampant in the USA and a true blemish in what the USA is supposed to stand for. I was brought up to believe, and still do, that we live in a democratic country where we are free and all citizens are equal -- all in all I find these things being quietly taken away, little by little, but that is another story...

It took nearly 100 years after the ratification of the United States gaining its independence from England and nearly another 100 years after that before the rights of humans of African descent in the USA were becoming recognized. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is the beginning of the second paragraph of the Declaration Of Independence. What most folks do not realize is that when America was founded, it left slavery as a practice to be determined by future generations. That fact left blacks and other ethnic groups to be looked down upon as well as treating groups that were not white, or for that matter certain kinds of white because the Irish were persecuted when they first arrived in the USA, be a practice that was tolerated for generation upon generation. Racial and cultural intolerance was the common practice in America even though America was founded under a revolution because the citizens of the USA were persecuted by England -- Thus the great hypocrisy began.

more

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/commentary/you-and-the-international-civil-rights-museum-t.p.-mcwhorter.html