28 April 2012 Tennessee legislators and the American Taliban

          I experienced the Civil Rights movement of the 1950-60s.   While I was still in junior high and high school, I possessed enough awareness of what was morally right and wrong that it was readily apparent when civic and religious leaders were on the wrong side of right. 

          I’ve seen the governor of Mississippi stand in the door of a university to block access for a black student who had been admitted to study there.  I’ve seen nightly news broadcasts, which showed fire hoses and police dogs, used to force demonstrators from the streets of Birmingham Alabama.   I’ve seen the National Guard deployed to protect black students who were trying to attend a previously segregated high school in Little Rock Arkansas.

          Later, I lived in an Arkansas city that avoided desegregation by creating a “Christian Academy” open only to white students whose families could afford the tuition.  Black students were allowed to enroll in the formerly all-white hospital but the city schools stopped their bus service so that transportation became a problem for black students who lived in a remote and segregated section of town.  Black airmen at the Air Force base outside the town were unable to find housing in town. 

          I lived in a town in S.W. Missouri that had no black citizens.   When a black Post Mistress was appointed, she had to find housing in a Kansas town 20 miles away. 

          It has not been all that long that racial equality became a legally mandated set of laws and actions.  We still operate with one of two major political parties that is apoplectic that a black male is now POTUS.  The major protestant church in the nation was founded to maintain slavery as an economic system. 

          The current spate of hate-filled legislation coming out of Nashville is treating women as if they were now property rather than citizens.  The apparent goal is to return Tennessee to the pre-Civil War pattern of religious and civil laws and traditions that will cause it to be little more that an enclave of third world culture along with the other “red States.” 

          The time to stop this backward slide is now.  We all know better.  We all must work to force Tennessee into the 21^st century.  There is a better choice for us.  Park Overall is standing for U.S. Senator.  If we can elect her and others like her, we can prevent s 2^nd Scope Trial.