Rosa Parks Day in California ~ International Year of People of African Descent

Sacramento, CA ~ Friday, February 4, 2011, the birthday of Rosa Louise McCauley Parks is our official kick-off for Rosa Parks Day in California featuring “Let’s Move !! Food as Medicine” and challenge our “Faith Based Partners” toward implementation of Healthy Solutions in California to met the economic challenges of diet related disease impacting our entire community, especially the youth.

On Saturday, February 5, 2011, at the California State Capitol, our Rosa Parks Day Celebration will honor regional community youth who demonstrate the faith and courage of Rosa Parks featuring Delaine Eastin, former California State Superintendent of Public Instruction and “good news” from the United Stated Department of Agriculture.

On Monday, February 7, 2011, official Rosa Parks Day in California, intermodal transportation systems throughout the State of California will continue to build support towards achieving equity and equality, this special UN, International Year of People of African Descent.

We are proud to share our extended family heritage through the legacy of Rosa Parks that connects Classical African Civilization to the Black Warrior River Basin of Alabama and the Central Valley of California, “the Greatest Garden in the World.”

Utilizing the broader platform of the United Nations International Year of People of African Descent we expand perfunctory Black History Month celebrations into a broader global examination of essential structural adjustments necessary to achieve universal healing caused by traumatic centuries of human rights violations.

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 of Tuskegee, Alabama.

The name Alabama comes from a rough translation of "herb gathers" from the indigenous language of our Black Warrior River Valley, part of a larger 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, was acquired in 1803 from the Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte who was given title by Spanish authority.

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

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in 1823 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 Land Loss 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."

Taking ancestral lands and establishing "King Cotton" on the back of enslaved human beings, destroying ancient civilizations of antiquity.
Jefferson Finis Davis, a West Point Graduate, Mississippi Senator and a U.S. Secretary of War, was elected President of the Confederate States of America.

The early 112th Congress, marks the Bicentennial of the start of the U.S. Civil War, January 9, 1861, Citadel, Fort Sumpter, South Carolina.

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.

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.

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 of People of African Descent… a Tribute to Dear Rosa" and remember her faith and courage that changed the world.