By Judith Stanford Miller, M.Ed., M.A. April 4, 2018 – On this day 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, pastor and civil rights activist, was assassinated as he stood on a hotel balcony in Memphis. He was in Memphis to support African American sanitation workers who were on strike for safer working conditions and higher wages. The Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) Memorial, a National Park Service (NPS) site, opened in 2011 in Washington near the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial provides visitors with a wonderful opportunity to reflect on Dr. King’s life. It’s a fitting tribute to a man who sacrificed his life for a cause greater than himself. He is the Father of the Civil Rights Movement. Student News Net visited the MLK Memorial on Thursday, March 29, 2018 and spoke with Alicia and Dominique Cole from Texas who were there visiting the memorial. Watch their interview below.
By Judith Stanford Miller, M.Ed., M.A (This article was first published on Student News Net: Montgomery City Bus 2857 – The Rosa Parks Bus , Jan. 23, 2018, ID #9079) Jan. 23, 2018 – It’s the most significant artifact of the modern Civil Rights Movement, Christian Overland, executive vice president and chief historian at the Henry Ford in Dearborn, Mich., said to Student News Net last Friday as he stood beside the 1950s era olive green and yellow Montgomery, Alabama city bus 2857 – the Rosa Parks Bus. Dec. 1, 1955 Visitors to the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation can board the bus and sit in the exact seat occupied by Rosa Parks on Dec. 1, 1955 when James Blake, the bus driver, ordered her to relinquish her seat to a white passenger. She peacefully and politely refused. As a result, Rosa was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of violating the city’s segregation ordinance, taken to jail, and then released quickly when a friend posted the $100 bail. Montgomery’s African American community harnessed their collective economic power to protest Rosa’s arrest through a peaceful boycott of the Montgomery city bus system. The boycott lasted 381 days. In 1956, the U.S. […]
Edna Griffin and Rosa Parks held nation accountable By Judith Stanford Miller, M.Ed., M.A. (This article was first published on Student News Net, Sept. 22, 2017, ID #8945) Sept. 22, 2017 – Two African American women – Edna Griffin in Des Moines, Iowa at a lunch counter in 1948 and Rosa Parks on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 – stood up for their civil rights by quietly sitting at a lunch counter and on a bus respectively. In doing so, they held the nation accountable and influenced American history. One hundred and fifty-five years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The final Emancipation Proclamation was issued a few months later on Jan. 1, 1863. The National Archives summarizes what President Lincoln proclaimed in the document. On Aug. 23, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., through his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, challenged the nation to live up to the promises made in the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation. Edna Griffin Often called the Rosa Parks of Iowa, Edna’s action for equality in 1948 occurred seven years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city […]
