Week of Feb. 4-10

February 4

ROSA PARKS

1913—Civil rights heroine Rosa Parks is born on this day in Tuskegee, Ala. It was her refusal in December 1955 to give up her seat to a White man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus that sparked the modern Civil Rights Movement. For refusing to obey the laws of segregation, she was arrested and convicted. Montgomery Blacks responded with a boycott of city buses. A young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. was called upon to lead the boycott, which would last for nearly 13 months. The drama and accompanying legal challenge all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court captivated the nation and propelled Dr. King into the national international spotlight as the nation’s premier civil rights leader. Mrs. Parks died in 2005 at 92.

January 21

1773—Poet Phyllis Wheatley, born in 1753, was freed on this day in 1773. Kidnapped in Africa and sold as a slave when she was only seven years old, Wheatley would become Black America’s first poet. She grew up in a prosperous Boston family, which allowed her to learn to read. She not only mastered English but also excelled in Greek and Latin. Her first book of poetry received rave reviews in the United States and Europe.

(NNPA)—A group of Black Ivy League students and graduates claim the owners of a popular club in Cambridge, Mass. unfairly kicked them out because of their ethnicity.

According to Boston NBC affiliate WHDH, an event was held at Cure Lounge by a group of Black Yale and Harvard students on Nov. 18. But the private function, held in celebration of the big Harvard-Yale football game, was shut down just 15 minutes after it started.

While some bouncers blamed the shut-down on technical difficulties, one of the students said he overheard club managers say they spotted “gang bangers” in line to enter, and were allegedly concerned that the Black students and graduates would draw the wrong crowd.

While prosecutors insisted Katrina offers no excuses, attorneys for the five current or former officers charged in Henry Glover's death have urged jurors to consider the 2005 storm when judging their actions.

STORMY TRIAL— Rev. Audrey Wallace, left, from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Rebecca Glover, aunt of Henry Glover, talk outside the courthouse where five New Orleans police officers are on trial in New Orleans, Nov. 10. (Ao Photo/Gerald Herbert)