The funeral organizers made a big mistake having Lowery speak

[Cocoa]

they should have had someone like Bill Bennett or Matt Drudge or Kate O'Beirne in his place. These fine folks care deeply about preserving the King legacy, and they know that this requires the proper decorum.

Unlike this Lowery guy, whoever he is.

http://currents.ucsc.edu/04-05/11-29/lowery.asp

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King in 1957 and led the organization for 20 years, will be the keynote speaker at UCSC’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation on January 10.

Lowery, who will discuss Martin Luther King's legacy and the 21st century, will speak at 7 p.m. in the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Lowery played a major role in many of the pivotal civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s and has remained active.

In a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, Lowery was among four ministers sued by Alabama officials for $3 million in the early 1950s. Lowery’s property was seized, but he was vindicated when the court ruled for the ministers in the landmark 1964 libel case, Sullivan v. New York Times, Abernathy, Lowery, Shuttlesworth, and Seay.

In 1965, King named Lowery to deliver the demands of a planned Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights to then-Alabama Governor George Wallace. In an event that shocked the nation, police tear-gassed and clubbed the peaceful marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge. The brutality of what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday” focused the nation's attention on the extreme measures used to prevent black citizens from exercising their constitutional right to vote, leading Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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[politicaholic]

1. Perhaps they should have chosen Clarence Thomas...

His anti-affirmative action stance would have gone over well with that crowd.

[TheDebbieDee]

4. What a great idea!

Supreme Court Justice Clarence "The Uncle" Thomas would have been the perfect person to speak about Coretta Scott King's struggles against social injustice.
:sarcasm:

[Roho]

2. And

What were they thinking asking Maya Angelou to speak.

Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.



Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.



Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.



Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?



Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my own backyard.



You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.



Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?



Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.



Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

[Cocoa]

3. that's great

thanks for posting that awesome poem.

And a question, how did you get it to look like that, with the shading?

[Roho]

6. She made me cry yesterday

knowing people like her live and thrive gives me hope

ok i'll stop showing off...just put [] around div class="excerpt" and /div

I just saw it in the html lookup table link in the comment box above smilies look up.;)

[Cocoa]

8. thanks!

:hi:

[Cronus Protagonist]

5. Is this him? (pic)

[xchrom]

7. a picture is worth a thousand words...

[beaconess]

10. The only problem - Lowery should have turned around to point!

[beaconess]

9. GREAT Post!

[GreenPartyVoter]

11. *lol*

[DemoTex]

12. Bill Bennett would have been perfect.

That would have further validated Charles Rangel's comments on white supremacy.*


GOP's morally bankrupt Bill

* "If there's one thing that George Bush has done that we should never forget, it's that for us and for our children, he has shattered the myth of white supremacy once and for all." Charles Rangel (D-NY)

[Cocoa]

13. Mary Matalin

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602090003

Matalin: "I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists. And they're keeping ... their African-American brothers enslaved"

Summary: Commenting on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes about the speakers at Coretta Scott King's funeral, Mary Matalin said, "I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists" who are keeping "their African-American brothers enslaved."

Apparently referring to some of the speakers at Coretta Scott King's February 7 funeral, Republican political strategist Mary Matalin stated that "these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists." Continuing, Matalin claimed that "they're keeping constituency, they're keeping their neighborhoods and their African-American brothers enslaved ... by continuing to let them think that they're -- or forced to think that they're victims." Matalin's comments came during the February 8 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes.

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