The death of Rosa Parks signals the beginning of the end of many of our hallmark civil rights heroes whose courage and bravery set the stage and paved the way for many early gains that African Americans today take for granted.

Now that Mrs. Rosa is gone, the task falls to this generation to come out of the tents of complacency and indifference and pick up the burning torch that has been stationary since the 1960s waiting for the next great group of daring civil rights explorers and warriors to stand up and say, “Here I am, send me.”

In 1955, Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking the modern civil rights movement.  Her act of defiance was monumental and changed the course and dialog in America that set in motion changes in Jim Crow laws that has been in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction.

These laws required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept Blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.

Many African Americans were shot, lynched, burned out and terrorized at the hand of white people in the North and South, who refused to give up those basic “perks” America provided that allowed whites to enjoy personal rights and get away with murder under the guise of the red, white and blue.

That warfare and landscape was changed by Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and many others whose sacrifices are a testimony and symbolic of the importance of keeping the dreams of justice, freedom and civil liberties for every Black, Brown and Red person alive today.

Even Rosa Park has her doubts about how well the sacrifices would resonate across the ages and future generations of Black Americans.  In 1988, Parks echoed her concerns that Black young people took legal equality for granted.

Those who remember her, point to her words that older Blacks have tried to shield young people from what we have suffered and that has contributed to many Blacks having complacent attitudes in the post civil rights era.  She lived to see the tenets and symbolisms of a movement fade and be replaced with territorial greed, sell-outs, turf wars and separatism that plagues Black communities today.

I wonder what Mrs. Parks would have said about some Mega-Church Black preachers standing and railing with the White “Evangelical Right” against the Millions More Movement?

   History moment: It was the forefathers of the “Evangelical Right” who enslaved us 400 years and brainwashed us using God’s word into a mindset that God blessed “Master” and “Master was King.”

It was these same “Masters,” who used the Bible not only to justify slavery, but also to uphold the very racist practices and principles that caused Rosa Parks to sit down on that bus in Montgomery and refuse to get up in the first place.  It is these same fellows today who can’t even worship in unity in the same churches on Sunday.  They have literally punched civil rights pioneers like Parks, Dr. King Jr., Evers and Malcolm X in the eye, because today they stand for nothing and have sold out like Judas to the Sanhedrin for a few pieces of modern “gold and silver.”

When will we ever learn that the greatest acts of terrorism are being committed in this country today are against Black, Brown and Red people. The MMM mirrors the civil rights movement, because it speaks boldly and stands up against the elitist powers that continue to use “lies and trickery” to confuse and divide Black people in this country.  It tells the truth about what we need today as a people to continue the hopes and dreams Parks, King, Malcolm and others.

Mrs. Parks wants this movement to continue until true freedom and justice is realized among all African American citizens in the United States of America.

“We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be Black in America today.”  ~ Words Black America must never forget …

The voice of Rosa Parks is silent now and her wisdom is left to the ages.  We will never hear her speak again on this side of life, but she has gone to rest and left the fight in our hands.

Will you ‘sit down’? …And you know what I mean.