This post was originally published on Afro
To Be Equal #48
Marc H. Morial
President and CEO, National Urban League
“There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., December 5 1955, Address to the first Montgomery Improvement Association Mass Meeting
This week marks the anniversary of the first of the Mass Meetings that drove the strategy and spirit of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a foundational event in the Civil Rights Movement.
My parents were active in the Civil Rights Movement in Louisiana at the time, and their experiences illustrate how the Montgomery protests reverberated throughout the South, and also how New Orleans’ distinctive history shaped racial issues there.`