Summary: The Civil Rights Movement

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2014 promises to be another year filled with well-deserved commemoration for hard-fought civil rights legislation, anniversaries and demonstrations. Yet if we focus on the past, without providing meaningful context for the present, we can obscure the complexity of the very struggles we seek to celebrate. The civil rights movement was a long, continuous struggle for justice in America, not a bedtime story with a beginning, middle and end. “Rosa sat, so Martin could run, so that Barack could fly,” is a nice sentiment but makes for poor history. We can best honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer and the countless unnamed souls who helped usher in a new freedom era by acknowledging the large task that is ahead

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