While the National Park Service was busy violating our first amendment right to peacefully assemble, the ‘protestors’ were loudly chanting their dissent through their megaphone. Ignoring the fact that a significant number of those on the Freedom Ride were black, the protesters acted as if those present were all white and they were angry and offended that we sang We Shall Overcome. Despite the presence of Naomi and Alveda King (wife and daughter of A.D. King) they were angry and offended that we sought to show our respects at the tomb of MLK. They were defiant in their anger, believing we had no “right to co-opt” the civil rights legacy.
Co-opt the civil rights legacy - what does that mean?! The civil rights movement that I remember brought attention to the horrific impact of slavery and Jim Crow. Martyrs like Emmet Till put a face on the inhumane treatment of blacks in the south and around the nation. It demanded an end to government sanctioned institutionalized racism. The prolife movement has drawn similar attention to the abortion industry. As clearly documented in the annals of history, abortion is cloaking government sanctioned institutionalized discrimination. The location of the clinics and the numbers of abortions performed on blacks bear this belief out. Yet these protestors condemned us for "stepping on their rights" as they accused us of perpetuating the discrimination.
In my mind I had thought that once the abortion industry was exposed, there would be an uprising all across the nation to stop it. When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged her understanding “…that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of” I had no idea that abortion was so deeply rooted in our community. I believed everyone would recognize that the group we "don't want too many of" is African American. Even with this revelaton many black women override our history of racism and discrimination in order to participate in abortion’s killing fields.
There was a time in the black community when it would have been unconscionable for a black woman to even consider killing her children in this way. Despite being raped by slave or KKK masters of the south, black women bore their children with a dignity that surpassed the day to day obstacles of race. My memories of being black in America are of strong black men and women that defied the odds and kept and raised their children despite massive social justice concerns that sought to make it otherwise. Many black women suffered the indignity of being considered the mammy of the white child when it was her own child. Blacks suffered the indignity of being shuffled aside when whites passed, or when they were made to sit in the backs of buses and other transportation, in order to make a way for their children to live.
The civil rights era I remember draped itself in the principles expounded in the Bible. It did not subordinate itself to the political dogma of ungodly principles, such as those found in today’s Democrat Party. Never were we defined by whether or not we supported ungodly principles over all others – until now. Many blacks are so busy being Democrat we have forgotten our roots and what it means it be black. We no longer protect one another and our interests. We have succumbed to a dogma that has true racists shouting with glee because we participate in our own destruction.
I am sure that had we arrived earlier, we would have seen the white women of Planned Parenthood doling out the signs and other protest paraphernalia to their black “sisters”. We would have seen who is really behind these protests to keep killing black babies in the womb. We could have observed for ourselves how the puppet masters pulled the strings of those unfortunate women that were dancing the macabre dance of a woman’s right to choose.
The stakes have changed in the fight for rights. At stake are not civil rights, but the lives of millions of babies, little human beings the abortionists don’t want America to recognize or think about. At stake is the very legacy of the African American community. Without babies there is no African American community, there is no heritage, there is no lineage, and there is no life.
