February Is Black History Month & Here Is Rosa Parks Bus, What A Brave Woman*

We got to see & sit on this bus when we were at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mi., right outside of Detroit. Detroit was of course one of our cities also greatly affected during the Civil Rights Movement.

Some thirty three years ago when I experienced a mind opening stint in college radio [91.7fm, whus] , I learned about Black History Month. I was very young during the crux of the Civil Rights strife's in this country, so far removed that all a concerned young person could do back then was to anguish at the reports of; the innocent demise of young children when they sat in church, the people that went missing, later found & destroyed in the most horrid of ways, the famous "sit-ins" one being at the Woolworth's soda counter, the marches, the wonderfully inspiring speeches, & the continued, seemingly never ending, taking of lives. The respond throughout this country's cities were mass riots, & more violence, which seemed to go on, & on.

I rode a city bus to work during that era with people of all incomes, backgrounds & color, of whom worked & lived in the neighborhood where I worked. At the cafeteria in the city hospital where I was employed we warmly joked with one another that beyond the walls within which we were then sitting, others were out there doing bodily harm to one another. We remarked to one another as to why individuals could not just get along "Look at us.", we said, "We like each other, we're friends, we wouldn't think of doing such things." On each trip to work, or home, never was there an incidence of which would cause an once of concern.

Everybody knows the known heroes from that era, but there are a lot of heroes less known on the national scene, one of them is my friend's father; Johnny Duke. Johnny Duke was a former professional boxer. An energetic, compassionate & charismatic man who worked very hard in his dedication with the youth of Hartford, Connecticut. Hartford was the city in which I traveled back & forth to my job as a newly graduated nurse to Mount Sinai Hospital, in the north end of the city. It was Johnny Duke who was just about the only person who could be trusted by the youth of the city, as these young boys had lived to see so many generations upon generation of their families growing up without hope & living in poverty & despair. It was he who defused any potential violence in our capitol city, he was a true man of the people, my good pisan's Dad.

Time has passed of course, we have a President now who is of the February History Month, but ultimately, if we want to make it, not only as a people, but as a species, we must put aside conceived notions, & give the respect that we all so deserve. It begins of course from within, as it is an extreme exercise of the collective human condition, with each step building upon the next. We have this potential to do what is right, it's practical, yet always spiritual too, no matter the size, color or creed.