Post by Onyango Oloo on Jan 31, 2006 19:00:08 GMT 3
A Tribute from Onyango Oloo
www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1154673,00.html
today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-01-31T134711Z_01_N31367618_RTRUKOC_0_US-KING.xml
_"It's a bleak morning for me and for many people and yet it's a great morning because we have a chance to look at her and see what she did and who she was," poet Maya Angelou said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"She was a sister-friend to me, we called each other 'children sisters.' She was a great wife obviously and a wonderful mother and a great woman, a great American. When I think of great Americans she's one of the people I think of."
_"Her loss is shocking not just to the civil rights movement but to progressives throughout the country and the world," said Congressman Charles Rangel of Harlem. "We will miss her. But she certainly picked up the baton when it was dropped by her husband's assassination and continued to move forward in the civil rights arena."
_"She was truly the first lady of the human rights movement. The only thing worse than losing her is if we never had her," the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York said in a statement.
"For those of us that were too young to get to know Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. very well, we got to know Coretta Scott King as a compassionate, caring, yet firm matriarch of the movement for justice. She was kind and gentle with impeccable grace and dignity, yet firm and strong and immovable under issues that she and her husband committed their lives to."
_"The great thing I have is every year for Christmas and birthday I get a birthday card from her. I look forward to Christmas. I look forward to my birthday, because of that. I just love her. You cannot look at her face and tell what she has been through," activist-comedian richard nixon perhaps? Gregory told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
_"Mrs. King will be known around the world as her own great leader. I'm just so happy now that she can join her husband Martin," Georgia state Rep. Tyrone Brooks told WSB-TV in Atlanta.
Coretta Scott was a person before she met her famous spouse and became an icon in her own right after he was cut off by hired hate instruments.
It is of course impossible to think of Coretta wihout thinking of Martin.
It is sad that women's lives too often are seen through the prism of the men in their lives- husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, lovers, co-workers, bosses or even neighbours.
I remember starting a particularly stormy thread on the Mashada forum to protest the way the Kenyan media stubbornly insisted on referring to Graca Machel as "Mandela's wife"- as if the renowned Mozambican freedom fighter and globe-trotting children's rights activist only sprung to life when Madiba slipped a wedding band on her finger.
Looking at the milestones of Coretta's long and eventful life journey we see a peace and civil rights activist who was an equal partner with MLK in all their endeavours; we see a colossus who fought hard battles to ensure that the values symbolized by Martin were mainstreamed within the American polity. Having January 15th declared as a national holiday was a signal from Black America that they had come forward to stake their claim as part and parcel of the definition of the United States. Therefore the efforts of Coretta, Stevie Wonder, Rosa Parks, Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, Harry Belafonte extended far and beyond the African-American community.
It can be argued successfully that the African-American led civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s especially, helped to kick open the doors of opportunity for the Women's movement, Indigenous People of Turtle Island, Latinos, Latinas, Chicanos, Chicanas, Asians, Pacific Islanders, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people and other marginalized groups in American society. It is often overlooked that the vast majority of African-Americans belong in the working class-as opposed to the nebulous "underclass" of Moynihan et al. Therefore, what Black people won in terms of rights seeped into working class victories in the United States of America.
That is why all the above groups of Americans have today lost one of their greatest champions.
For Africans like myself, the American civil rights movement with its stellar leaders like Coretta helped to inspire our own freedom struggles on this continent. Stalwarts like the late Bantu Steve Biko openly and repeatedly acknowledged the debt the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa owed to African-Americans led by icons like Coretta.
I will NOT repeat the cliche about "Coretta is gone but blah blah blah yakety yakety yak" because that overworn platitude has become shorn of meaning.
Instead I implore all those reading these lines is to spare a moment of silence for one of world's true Amazons.
Hamba Kahle Coretta!
Onyango Oloo
Bamako, Mali
www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1154673,00.html
today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-01-31T134711Z_01_N31367618_RTRUKOC_0_US-KING.xml
_"It's a bleak morning for me and for many people and yet it's a great morning because we have a chance to look at her and see what she did and who she was," poet Maya Angelou said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"She was a sister-friend to me, we called each other 'children sisters.' She was a great wife obviously and a wonderful mother and a great woman, a great American. When I think of great Americans she's one of the people I think of."
_"Her loss is shocking not just to the civil rights movement but to progressives throughout the country and the world," said Congressman Charles Rangel of Harlem. "We will miss her. But she certainly picked up the baton when it was dropped by her husband's assassination and continued to move forward in the civil rights arena."
_"She was truly the first lady of the human rights movement. The only thing worse than losing her is if we never had her," the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York said in a statement.
"For those of us that were too young to get to know Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. very well, we got to know Coretta Scott King as a compassionate, caring, yet firm matriarch of the movement for justice. She was kind and gentle with impeccable grace and dignity, yet firm and strong and immovable under issues that she and her husband committed their lives to."
_"The great thing I have is every year for Christmas and birthday I get a birthday card from her. I look forward to Christmas. I look forward to my birthday, because of that. I just love her. You cannot look at her face and tell what she has been through," activist-comedian richard nixon perhaps? Gregory told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
_"Mrs. King will be known around the world as her own great leader. I'm just so happy now that she can join her husband Martin," Georgia state Rep. Tyrone Brooks told WSB-TV in Atlanta.
Coretta Scott was a person before she met her famous spouse and became an icon in her own right after he was cut off by hired hate instruments.
It is of course impossible to think of Coretta wihout thinking of Martin.
It is sad that women's lives too often are seen through the prism of the men in their lives- husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, lovers, co-workers, bosses or even neighbours.
I remember starting a particularly stormy thread on the Mashada forum to protest the way the Kenyan media stubbornly insisted on referring to Graca Machel as "Mandela's wife"- as if the renowned Mozambican freedom fighter and globe-trotting children's rights activist only sprung to life when Madiba slipped a wedding band on her finger.
Looking at the milestones of Coretta's long and eventful life journey we see a peace and civil rights activist who was an equal partner with MLK in all their endeavours; we see a colossus who fought hard battles to ensure that the values symbolized by Martin were mainstreamed within the American polity. Having January 15th declared as a national holiday was a signal from Black America that they had come forward to stake their claim as part and parcel of the definition of the United States. Therefore the efforts of Coretta, Stevie Wonder, Rosa Parks, Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, Harry Belafonte extended far and beyond the African-American community.
It can be argued successfully that the African-American led civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s especially, helped to kick open the doors of opportunity for the Women's movement, Indigenous People of Turtle Island, Latinos, Latinas, Chicanos, Chicanas, Asians, Pacific Islanders, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people and other marginalized groups in American society. It is often overlooked that the vast majority of African-Americans belong in the working class-as opposed to the nebulous "underclass" of Moynihan et al. Therefore, what Black people won in terms of rights seeped into working class victories in the United States of America.
That is why all the above groups of Americans have today lost one of their greatest champions.
For Africans like myself, the American civil rights movement with its stellar leaders like Coretta helped to inspire our own freedom struggles on this continent. Stalwarts like the late Bantu Steve Biko openly and repeatedly acknowledged the debt the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa owed to African-Americans led by icons like Coretta.
I will NOT repeat the cliche about "Coretta is gone but blah blah blah yakety yakety yak" because that overworn platitude has become shorn of meaning.
Instead I implore all those reading these lines is to spare a moment of silence for one of world's true Amazons.
Hamba Kahle Coretta!
Onyango Oloo
Bamako, Mali
