Claudette Colvin: The spark before Rosa Parks
I've always been fascinated by the story of Claudette Colvin. On March 2, 1955, Claudette was a 15-year-old frightened Black girl who refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus ...
Teaching children about race relations
I was in college in the '60s when a classmate told me about a little child who had never seen a black person before. My classmate had been traveling with her husband, a U.S. soldier stationed in Europe. "Mommy, ...
Thinking right or wrong before race
When we as human beings think primarily along racial lines, we unwittingly disqualify ourselves as objective and even reliable observers of an occurrence at hand. Why? Because far too many of us have ...
A chilling message from Dallas
A chilling message was sent as five police officers were killed and seven others wounded in downtown Dallas on July 7 as they were monitoring peaceful protests against the recent killings by police of ...
Rewriting the script in Roanoke -- and at home
The question that haunts the aftermath of tragedies resulting in death and heartbreak is often the same: Could any of us have seen it coming and stopped it? The news was indeed horrific the morning of ...
Charleston tragedy should drive us to, not away from, church
There are people who will steal, but never from a church. There are those who will kill, but never in a house of God, where the faithful congregate to worship and seek God's blessings for themselves ...
In Baltimore, a lesson in blame
At the height of the rioting in Baltimore in late April following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man who died after being in police custody, the city's mayor referred to those ...
