LITTLE ROCK
Let justice roll down like water righteousness like a mighty stream
For our grandsons and granddaughters remember to remember the dream
Welcome to Songs and Stories from Home as we continue to share and Remember the Dream.
When asked what changed because of the Civil War, Ken Burns, America’s Cinematic Storyteller, said "before the war people said the United States are... After the war people said the United States is…"
We are living in a country now that might be better described not as the United States but as the Divided States of America. Blue on one side Red on the other. Often treating each other as adversaries, as the enemy. Fighting to win in what are known as the Battleground states. In 1861 it was Blue on one side Gray on the other. Real enemies on real battlefields. There was a song I learned when I was in high school…
Two brothers on their way – two brothers on their way – two brothers on their way – one wore blue and the other wore gray –
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 60’s needs to be studied and celebrated and remembered by all Americans because that time in our history helped bring us closer to who, I believe, we were meant to be – dreamt to be; a moment that made more true one of the best known sentences in the English language. We hold these truths to be self-evident – that all men -and as was proclaimed at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1854 – all women - are created equal, that we are each and all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That’s the first line in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, words that also declare our interdependence and connectedness, to and in an American Dream.
In 1954, in the Brown verses Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court proclaimed that in the United States separate was not equal. In the fall of 1957 nine black students enrolled at the previously all white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas and the country took another tentative step toward making the American Dream real for everyone.
Let justice roll down like water righteousness like a mighty stream
For our grandsons and granddaughters remember to remember the dream
