The participants in the sketch trivialized the civil rights
movement into a “Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary” that
allowed students to go to integrated proms and and black people
to shop at Wal-Marts in the ghetto. I only caught the tail end
of the sketch, admittedly, but from Exit 16 to Draffenville,
along U.S. 68, I kept replaying what I had heard over and over
in my mind. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became.
This entire column could be filled with a list of men and women,
black and white, who died fighting for civil rights. The most
prominent is of course, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., murdered in
Memphis on April 4, 1968. His crime was to hope his children had
the same opportunities as white children. His modus operandi was
non-violence, even as riots gripped the nation. Then we have the
Sept. 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Ala. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole
Robertson and Cynthia Wesley were all little girls who were
preparing to attend the mo