Rosa Parks Day in California ~ From Slavery and the Journey to Freedom

California State Capitol, Sacramento ~ Noon, Monday, February 7, 2011, we begin the official Rosa Parks Day in California. An Evening Program, Room 126, 5:00 p.m. features Delaine Eastin, former California Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tureeda Mikell, famed International Poet / Storyteller and Syrai Harris, youth motivational speaker.

2011 Black History Month ~ United Nation's International Year for People of African Descent is a opportunity to share our extended agriculture heritage through the legacy of Rosa Parks that connects Classical African Civilization, through the Black Warrior River Basin of Alabama to the Central Valley of California, “the Greatest Garden in the World.”

California Rosa Parks Day continues to expand the celebration of Rosa Parks into a broader global examination of theessential structural adjustments necessary to achieve universal healing caused by traumatic centuries of human rights violations considering “Food as Medicine.”

Rosa Louise McCauley was greatly influenced by her parents Leona and James McCauley, her grandparents Rose and Sylvester Edwards helped stabilize the young family in the difficult days of the "Jim Crow" south where terrorism of Black people was a common and accepted practice.

Rosa's mother was a schoolteacher who taught "Ag in the classroom" and cultivated her favorite vegetables broccoli, collard greens, sweet potatoes and string beans in the family kitchen garden just outside of Tuskegee, Alabama.

The origins of the name Alabama comes from a rough translation "herb gathers" from indigenous language the Tombigbee River Basin, Black Warrior River Valley, part of a larger ancient civilization of "Mound Builders," reaching back well over 5000 years ago, Washitaw Proper.

The broader Mississippi River Basin was part of the "Louisiana Purchase," nearly 1/3 of the entire continental United States, acquired in 1803 from the Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was given authorization to the land claim by Spanish authority.

After fall of the Spanish Port at Mobile Bay in 1814, the path to become a U.S. territory and later the State of Alabama, affectionately known as the heart of dixie, was ratified by the U.S. Congress in 1819, our 23rd State.

In 1823, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision which stated that "Indians" could occupy lands within the United States, but could not hold title to those lands. Thus only white men could hold U.S. title to land in America. This is the legal foundation and ongoing belief fundamental to Native American and people of African Descent unable to retain vast acres of land throughout the United States of America.

In 1830, President Andrew Jackson established an official U.S government policy called the "Indian Removal Act."

Indigenous populations continue to call it the "Trail of Tears and Death" a forced removal from the land and destruction of cultural ways. Taking ancestral lands and establishing "King Cotton" on the back of enslaved human beings, destroying ancient civilizations of antiquity.

Jefferson Davis, a West Point Graduate, Mississippi Senator and a U.S. Secretary of War, was elected President of the Confederate States of America and fought bravely to retain slavery throughout the land.

Today, some members of the 112th Congress mark the Sesquicentennial of the U.S. Civil War and celebrate a fond memory of January 9, 1861, when Citadel troops at Fort Sumpter, South Carolina began the maritime war effort to "Preserve America" a notion of values and beliefs very much alive in 2011.

Montgomery, Alabama, original capital of the Confederate States of America, was the site of Rosa Parks’ singular action, supported by the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized and mobilized by community action that changed the world and renewed the promise of America.

Earlier the historic Tuskegee Institute Airman, trained at nearby Maxwell Air Force Base to facilitate integration of air transportation during World War II, greatly assisted by Eleanor Roosevelt. Clean and green U.S. Transportation is essential to restoring, "Food as Medicine."

Many were reminded by President Barack Obama on Inauguration Day and U.S. Transportation officials are beginning to recognize Rosa Parks Day and the broader contributions of People of African Descent to the various intermodal transportation systems essential to sustain our broader U.S. Trade and Commerce objectives as well as essential clean and green public transportation to our daily lives.

2011 Rosa Parks Day in California, we pause to reflect upon our "International Year for People of African Descent… a Tribute to Dear Rosa" and remember her faith and courage standing firmly against, systemic institutional racism, as we consider “Food as Medicine” this special cultual transition season of new beginnings....