ROSA PARKS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION ~ California State Capitol

Listen to a tribute to Dear Rosa by LaBelle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_T7lxIxWTQ

On Saturday, February 6, 2010, Embassy Suites, Sacramento the Rosa Parks Day Awards Celebration will celebrate "Spirit in Water... A Tribute to Rosa Parks" and feature our local tradition of unique educational events during Black History Month throughout the Sacramento River Valley Basin of California.

We are proud to share the legacy of Black Agriculture and a historic vegetarian lifestyle where meat eating is traditionally reserved for special ceremonies and/or specific dietary needs.

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 of Tuskegee, Alabama.

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

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.

After the capture of the Spanish Port at Mobile Bay, in 1814, the State of Alabama, known today as the heart of dixie, was ratified by the U.S. Congress as the 23rd State in the Union, in 1819.

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. Only white men could hold title to land. This is the legal foundation to Native American and Black 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 the land 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 in 1861. He was unable to find a military strategy to defeat the Union during the U.S. Civil War.

Montgomery, Alabama, original capital of the Confederate States of America, shares the same birth date, a half century before the birth of Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, February 4, 1913 in nearby Tuskegee, Alabama.

The historic Tuskegee Airman through Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama helped integrate air transportation facilitated by the Civilian Pilot Training Program during World War II and President Roosevelt.

Today, the Civil Air Patrol, establish December 1, 1941, is commanded by Major General Amy Courter. The path toward equity and equal opportunity builds upon the historic civil rights action taken by Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, the broader Montgomery community and nationwide civil rights activists to remove legal barriers under the law.

National, California and Regional Transportation officials continue to recognize Black History and our ongoing contribution to the various intermodal transportation systems essential to sustain our U.S. Agriculture industry and broader U.S. Commerce.

Rosa Parks Day in California, we pause to reflect upon the "Spirit in Water, a Tribute to Dear Rosa" and remember her faith and courage that helped change the course of U.S. past, present and future.

Our ancestors from the Black Warrior River Valley of Alabama continue to live through the Spirit in Water and share a path toward a Renaissance of Black Agriculture throughout America.