Motley Moose – Archive

The subject of the President’s Weekly Address was covered earlier in the week. Please enjoy this post of First Lady Michelle Obama celebrating Black History Month. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

From the White House – Honoring the Women of the Civil Rights Movement, Both Past and Present

First Lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks at “Celebrating Women of the Movement,” an event honoring Black History Month, in the East Room of the White House, Feb. 20, 2015. The First Lady introduces moderator Vanessa De Luca, Editor-in-Chief of Essence magazine and the panel of intergenerational women who have played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement – both past and present.

Robert Carter III, you may ask? Who in the world was he and why should we care?

Well, I’ll tell you why we should: February is black history month, the month during which we should all reflect on the contributions that black Americans have made to this nation of ours and on the suffering our black brothers and sisters have endured. Robert Carter III is part of that history, for by his Deed of Gift in 1791 Carter–the richest man in the colony of Virginia–made clear his intention to free more than 450 slaves, more than the total number of slaves owned by his neighbors George Washington and Thomas Jefferson combined.

It sometimes takes years to correct or amend what we think we know as “history”, especially when simplistic themes become part of the conventional wisdom.  For far too long what we get taught about the civil rights movement in the United States has been packaged with a focus on Martin Luther King Jr (who is certainly also misrepresented) and a few other male leaders.  Often the role of women in the movement is ignored, or trivialized.  Representations of Rosa Parks as a woman who was tired and sat down on a bus in Montgomery sparking the Montgomery Boycott, led by King, in no way tell us the real story of Rosa Parks, or of the other women who were key in the movement.  Her history of activism before the bus incident was for many reasons obscured.  But no longer.

The good news is that at the same time Rosa Parks is being honored by being immortalized on a Forever stamp from the U.S. Postal Service, an in-depth study of Parks has also been released which will go a long way towards correcting history.