Comments on RESPECT in Birmingham

During my recent speaking engagement in Birmingham, Alabama, I was escorted by my host, David Hood, to some of the famous landmarks in the area.  I visited Kelly Ingram Park, the same park that became nationally recognized as the location where Eugene “Bull” Connors ordered the water hoses and police dogs  to be  turned on the children protesters during the civil rights struggle. I stood in the Sixteenth Street Baptist church where the four little girls, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair and Carol Robertson were killed when a bomb was thrown inside. I walked, knelt and stood on the same ground where the children and adult fighters for our civil rights were beaten for what they believed. I reflected on the time when Dr. Martin Luther King was put in jail and wrote the widely known “Letters from a Birmingham jail.” I thought of the words of the late James Brown who stated in one of his songs, “I‘d rather die on my feet, than keep living on my knees.”

I imagined the focus, determination and audacity that would have to exist in the spirits of those individuals in order to display that sort of passion and courage in the heat of opposition.  This was a very spiritually and emotionally filled portion of this trip. We are indeed standing on the shoulders and backs of giants. RESPECT to all of those warriors who stood up on the front lines of the struggle and said enough is enough.

Dr. Respect “Shujaa”