December 1: Remembering when Rosa Parks stood up for freedom, by sitting down

December 1, 2010

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted, Library of Congress

Mrs. Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Alabama; photo from New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, Library of Congress

Rosa Parks: “Why do you push us around?”

Officer: “I don’t know but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.”

From Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Quiet Strength
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Pub. House, 1994), page 23.

Photo: Mrs. Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Alabama; photo from New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, Library of Congress

Today in History at the Library of Congress provides the simple facts:

On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was full. Blacks were also required to sit at the back of the bus. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system and led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.

Rosa Parks made a nearly perfect subject for a protest on racism. College-educated, trained in peaceful protest at the famous Highlander Folk School, Parks was known as a peaceful and respected person. The sight of such a proper woman being arrested and jailed would provide a schocking image to most Americans. Americans jolted awake.

Often lost in the retelling of the story are the threads that tie together the events of the civil rights movement through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. As noted, Parks was a trained civil rights activist. Such training in peaceful and nonviolent protest provided a moral power to the movement probably unattainable any other way. Parks’ arrest was not planned, however. Parks wrote that as she sat on the bus, she was thinking of the tragedy of Emmet Till, the young African American man from Chicago, brutally murdered in Mississippi early in 1955. She was thinking that someone had to take a stand for civil rights, at about the time the bus driver told her to move to allow a white man to take her seat. To take a stand, she kept her seat. [More below the fold] Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Civil Rights, Famous quotes, History, Human Rights, Lessons of history, Martin Luther King, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Ohio news: No creationist right to burn crosses on junior high science students

December 1, 2010

Oops!  Update and correction, from NCSE, applies equally here:

Update and correction (December 1, 2010): The case is apparently not officially settled after all. What was approved was not the overall proposed settlement, but the terms of the settlement as it concerns Zachary Dennis (a minor) — the “James Doe” of the suit — and it was approved not by the judge presiding over the case, Gregory L. Frost of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, but by Licking County Probate Judge Robert Hoover, acting in his role as Juvenile Court Judge for the county. The settlement still needs to be approved by Judge Frost.

John Freshwater’s side finally agreed to a settlement in the suit against him and the local school district prompted by his using an electrical device, a small Tesla coil testing device, to burn crosses on the arms of students.  Thus mostly ends one of the more bizarre stories of creationism and misguided religion in a public school classroom.

Here is the entire story in all its anticlimactic wonder, from the Mount Vernon (Ohio) News:

Judge approves settlement in civil lawsuit

NEWARK — Licking County Probate Judge Robert Hoover on Nov. 23 approved a settlement agreement with regard to the civil lawsuit filed on behalf of Zachary Dennis against suspended Mount Vernon Middle School teacher John Freshwater.

The lawsuit was originally filed in the U.S District Court on June 13, 2008, and included as defendants the Mount Vernon City Schools Board of Education and various school employees. The suit alleged that Freshwater violated the constitutional rights of Zachary Dennis and those of his parents, Stephen and Jennifer Dennis, by, among other things, displaying religious items in his classroom, by teaching intelligent design and by expressing his own religious beliefs to students in the classroom.

The board’s portion of the lawsuit was resolved on or about Aug. 26, 2009, and Freshwater was the sole remaining defendant.

With Judge Hoover’s ruling last Tuesday, the suit against Freshwater was officially settled. The settlement of $475,000 to the Dennis family includes $25,000 for attorney fees, $150,000 each to Stephen and Jennifer, and $150,000 to be used for an annuity for Zachary.

At Panda’s Thumb, Richard B. Hoppe’s complete covering of the case notes that we still await the decision of the referee in the proceeding of John Freshwater’s appeal of his firing, and school board action on that recommendation.

At length, then, officially, it’s a bad idea for a creationist science teacher to burn crosses on the arms of supposedly-willing students using a Tesla coil, in any configuration. Yet to be determined:  May a school board fire a teacher who does that anyway?

More:

4 Comments | Creationism, Education, Education quality, Free speech, Religion, Religious Freedom, Science, Separation of church and state, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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