The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance #5: Floating Race Lines on Buses

If you only believe in freedom and rights for yourself, but not for other people, that is the same thing dictators believe. To really believe in freedom and rights you have to believe in freedom and rights for EVERYBODY.

If the government is leaving your group free, but threatening the rights of others, then, if you really believe in freedom, you have to stand up for those others. In a free country every group should be telling the government: “if you go after them, you are coming after us, and if you go after them, we are going to defend their rights the same way we would defend our own.”

I am reading this great book about the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement in America. That was a time when most black people did not have freedom or rights, and most white people just ignored the problem. Especially in the Southern states.

This book explains how, for a long time after the Civil War it was a CRIME in many Southern states to teach black people to read. How is that not a dictatorship?

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Parting the Waters

This book also explains some about that whole “back of the bus” thing. White people were allowed to sit in the front of the bus, but black people had to sit at the back. But there also had to be separation between them. Drivers would create a “floating line” on the bus to separate white people from black people. As the bus filled up drivers might order a whole row of black people to stand up to make more room for one white person.

Black people couldn’t even walk through the white section of the bus. They had to pay for their tickets at the front and then walk around to the back to reboard the bus in their own section….

How could these black people have been treated so unjustly for so long? How could so many white people have not cared about that injustice for so long? How is that not a dictatorship?

If one person can be deprived of his or her rights without due process of Constitutional laws then no one is free. We all have to stand together and back each other up.

Make sure the laws are Constitutional and make sure the government is following the laws. That’s how we defend liberty and justice for all.

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