In 1951, Some Courageous Blacks Proved that Sometimes You Have to Be the Change You Want to See

In 1951, event, such as the Moton High School Strike in Virginia, a walkout organized by a 16-year-old giel named Barbara Rose Johns, challenged segregated and substandard education for Black children and became a stepping stone to the Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, in which the U. S. Supreme Court ruled separate and unequal as unconstitutional and led to desegregated schools in the United States.

Another event in 1951 was a petition titled “We Charge Genocide” from the Civil Rights Council (CRC) and presented to the United Nations, charging the United States with genocidal behavior based on the U.N. Genocide Convention, because of the ways that blacks were treated, particularly over 10,000 being killed and lynched for trying to register to vote or claim their rights as citizens.

I remember better the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, because I was old enough to understand the need for social change, and the new medium of television exhibited the violent backlash by White authorities against peaceful protesters. I remember the sit-ins by young college students from historically Black colleges and universities, and witnessing the hatred of White crowds against young blacks students integrating schools in Arkansas and universities in the South.

Today, with gerrymandering reducing the voting power of Blacks and anti-immigrant hate in this country, for the second time in my life, I am afraid of being a Black person in my own country. I fear saying the wrong thing on my blog and being arrested. I fear walking down the street, even at age 74, without my birth certificate and passport in America, not in some foreign country.

But I have 15 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren whose futures are at risk of not benefiting from the gains made by the sacrifices of Ms. Johns, the CRC, and the Civil Rights Movement. Sometimes you have to let go of your own comfort for the common good, even as you are shaking in your boots.

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