I celebrate for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose dream is now officially a reality.I celebrate for Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins - 4 little girls killed while attending Sunday School at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.I celebrate for the Little Rock Nine.I celebrate for the Freedom Riders.I celebrate for Nat Turner.I celebrate for Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.I celebrate for 14-year-old Emmett Till, a teenage boy tortured and murdered for whistling at a white woman.I celebrate for Rosa Parks.I celebrate for Medgar Evers, a civil right leader killed by a sniper's bullet.I celebrate for the murdered and exiled residents of Rosewood, FL.I celebrate for the black men and women who persevered through the Jim Crow Era.I celebrate for the three civil rights workers, found buried 6 weeks after disappearing in Mississippi.I celebrate for the four black students who began sit-ins at a lunch counter where black patrons were not served.I celebrate for Thurgood Marshall who successfully argued to overturn segregation.I celebrate for the thousands of African Americans killed by lynching.I celebrate for the 399 victims of the Tuskeegee Experiment - black men unknowingly infected with syphilis for a government study of the disease.I celebrate for 29 victims of the Atlanta child murders in 1979.I celebrate for Michael A. Donald the 19-year-old lynched by two Klansmen in 1981.I celebrate for James Byrd, the 49-year-old black man chained to a truck and dragged to death through the streets by 3 white supremacists in 1998.I celebrate for the men and women who marched in Selma, some who paid for our voting rights with their lives.I celebrate for those who never thought they would live to see this day, and for those who unfortunately did not.I celebrate for my children, who will grow up with the confidence in knowing that they can truly be anything they want to be in life, even President.What does this day mean to you? See this post with photos and share your thoughts at www.mahoganybutterfly.com
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