Free Republic

Today is the 61st anniversary of the day Rosa Parks helped kickstart the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. It arrives as Donald Trump, a man many people have accused of unbridled bigotry, is about to take the White House. Would you believe they met once? The full, uncropped photo includes not just Trump and Parks, but also Muhammad Ali, Joe DiMaggio, Victor Borge, and Anita Bryant. (Parks died in 2005, and Ali in June.) All were receiving the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which is given by the National...

Twice a week, the University of Waterloo athletic centre suspends its usual calendar of mid-morning swim lessons, and reserves its 25-yard pool for the exclusive use of a demographic that, in their words, does not have a good “relationship with water.” “The aim is to get more Black Folx into a space where they haven’t always been welcomed,” reads the official description for the “Black Folx swim,” a 60-minute Black-only pool time. Users can swim lengths, practice diving or sign-up for a lesson. But they — and all the instructors — must be “Black folx.”

A Target shopper demanded “reparations” from her local store – in the form of $1,000 worth of groceries – and got punched in the face instead. The incident took place last October in Blue Ash, Ohio, but video of the incident only began circulating last week. The shopper, a black woman who was reportedly identified as Karen Ivery, first told her cashier that she was entitled to reparations that would cover the cost of her purchases — and then demanded to see the manager. When the manager approached, Ivery continued to demand “reparations,” shouting at the manager aggressively and eventually...

Rosa Parks is one of the very many human proofs of the greatness of America and American freedom. Using her freedom, she helped correct problems where freedom wasn't fully allowed to herself and far too many of her people. She used freedom of speech. She stated her beliefs clearly and powerfully to make freedom better. That is beautiful. So, on Rosa's 11oth birthday, I have combined her thoughts with images of beautiful actress Deeanna of Melbourne. God Bless Freedom. (click the red link under the title to see the visuals)

Hakeem Jeffries says quiet part out loud. Hugo Chavez is his hero.

A 16-year-old Wyoming high school student was arrested for refusing to wear a mask, resulting in an hour-long school lockdown. Grace Smith, a Laramie High School student, said in an interview with Wyoming Sen. Anthony Bouchard about her arrest that she had received three separate two-day suspensions. She was also allegedly fined $1,000 for trespassing after she refused to leave the school's premises. "It makes me angry," Smith said. "It makes me feel unwanted by the school system. It makes me stressed out that I have to fight this battle as a 16-year-old. Right now, I should be playing sports...

A new documentary looks into the life of a little-known queer Black legal scholar who refused to surrender her own bus seat — years before Rosa Parks — and influenced Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Driving the news: "My Name is Pauli Murray," set for release today on Amazon Prime, is the latest in a series of films examining the life of pioneering Black Americans who tackled systemic racism decades ago.

Dear Editor, During the May 11 City Council meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Matt Rahn unjustly maligned fellow Council Member Jessica Alexander for her reference to the Covid-19 virus as China Virus. Matt Rahn is simply parroting Chinese Communist Party (CCP) talking points while also failing to note that in late 2019 and early 2020, the virus was routinely called Wuhan Virus and Chinese Virus throughout our American establishment and major news media outlets. It was only after the Beijing-approved talking point by the China Xinhua News and intense behind the scenes lobbying by Chinese Communists that the narrative moved from...

Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, a top aide to Martin Luther King Jr., died last week. In 1965, Lewis suffered a fractured skull when he led 600 civil rights workers on a peaceful protest that turned violent as Lewis and the protesters were attacked by the police on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Ten years earlier, Rosa Parks famously challenged the Jim Crow segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat in the front section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The Supreme Court, a year earlier, unanimously struck down "separate but equal" school laws. Congress...

About AOC's comment about the "Sacred Honor" of the Medal of Freedom, with specific regards to Rosa Parks: Check out one of her fellow recipients, along with Muhammad Ali, in 1986

Appearing Monday on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, pro-impeachment Rep. Al Green (D-TX) invoked civil rights activist Rosa Parks in arguing for Congress to remove President Donald Trump from office.

It might seem unbelievable to some that Donald Trump could have been considered for an award in celebration of 'patriotism, tolerance, brotherhood and diversity.'......

I thought about it, and I realized that it wasn't so long ago that such minor travesties and often much, much worse were things black people lived through every day. I thought about it, and I realized that it wasn't so long ago that such minor travesties and often much, much worse were things black people lived through every day. While it was never something I ever had to worry about in my life, millions of minorities did have to worry about things like that. That being said, I think what happened at the Starbucks in Philly doesn't pass the...

The house has been up in Berlin less than a year, but after violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the growing call to remove Confederate monuments in the United States, the New York native said it’s now clear to him that Parks’ house needs to return soon to the U.S. “It’s actually become a necessity, as we see people rising up and seeing things for what they are,” he said. “As Americans begin to understand they have to re-contextualize these monuments, the Confederate statues, there is a lack of civil rights monuments to balance things out.”

Shortly before a recent Massachusetts state committee hearing to discuss a proposed “Anti-Discrimination Bill,” the Boston Globe ran an opinion piece criticizing the bill. The Op-Ed, by Columbia University professor Katherine Franke, argued that measures to discourage anti-Israel boycotts “betray” the legacy of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. In fact, Parks was an outspoken and very public opponent of discriminatory anti-Israel boycotts. […] … Along with Coretta Scott King, Bayard Rustin and other civil rights luminaries, Parks was a co-signer of a 1975 letter that described as “repugnant” the Arab world’s boycott targeting Israel, a precursor to today’s BDS movement....

The leader of the self-styled Oregon militia compared himself to civil-rights activist Rosa Parks. Ammon Bundy, the man who has emerged as the leader of a group that has engaged in an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon, tweeted that he and his group were doing exactly what Parks once did. "We are doing the same thing as Rosa Parks did. We are standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom," he wrote in a tweet posted early Wednesday morning.

The White House@WhiteHouse "Sixty years ago today, Rosa Parkschanged America." - @POTUS: pic.twitter.com/wq66wazHbu

If, as Rick Warren and others have suggested, religious liberty is becoming the major civil rights issue of our time, will Kim Davis be the Rosa Parks of the movement? Rosa Parks ignited the civil rights crusade against racial discrimination when, on December 1, 1955, she refused to move to the back section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in defiance of a city code stipulating where black people could sit. Will Rowan County Kentucky clerk Kim Davis' refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses because of her biblical beliefs, and subsequent incarceration, make her the rallying point for an energized...

olitics: Sen. Dick Durbin, who says Republicans have shoved attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch to the "back of the bus," once filibustered and opposed the GOP nominations of black and Latino appeals court judges. Last week, Durbin accused Republicans of forcing Lynch, President Obama's African-American nominee to replace Eric Holder, to "sit in the back of the bus" until a vote on a controversial sex trafficking bill could be held. That thinly veiled reference to the moment in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat in a Montgomery, Ala., bus was meant to paint Senate Republicans as...