Something must depart, before it can return.
On January 14, 1963, Democrat George Wallace, governor of that same state of Alabama, who pushed back hard against Parks and the civil rights movement in general, advocated, in his inaugural address, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." (If you want to relive that nauseating experience, you can do it here.)
Unfortunately for Wallace, but fortunately for the decent people of this country, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was just over the horizon and segregation was, at long last and none too soon, on its way out.
Or was it? Did it ever really go away and is it now making a comeback from the opposite side?
The demands of UC Santa Cruz African-American and Caribbean students, accepted by the school Thursday, sound more like Wallace than they do like Parks.
These undergraduates staged a sit-in at the university until the administration agreed to ratify what amounts to a new form of segregation, guaranteeing all black students the right to live together in one building. And, ironically, the building they have succeeded in segregating (in the name of "safe spaces" unsurprisingly) is that university's Rosa Parks African American Theme House. It will now be painted, also based on their demand, the Pan-African colors of red, green and black.
It's hard to say what Parks would have made of the paint job, but I doubt she or Dr. Martin Luther King--you know, the guy who gave that "I have a dream" speech about black and white children playing together--would think much of segregated residences or of the protesters' also accepted demand that all incoming freshpeople (freshies?) be given mandatory "diversity training" specifically approved by the protestors themselves (diversity of thought no doubt excluded).