All people are not equal and never will be. That is obvious. Some are much better at some things than others. Some are stronger, some are cleverer, some are faster, some are nicer. We can never all be the same.

But what is important is that, regardless of abilities, all people are of equal worth.

To place a value on a human being that relates to their race, gender, age, ability, disability, religion, political persuasion, creed, personality, culture, education, class, or preferences is simply wrong.

All people deserve equal opportunities. A system that penalises some requires opposing.

The greatest evil in our country today is…ignorance…We need to be taught to study rather than to believe.”
― Septima Poinsette Clark

Education is the only way we are going to build better societies and ultimately a better world. We need to dispel the tribal myths that create division. We need to devise systems that enable all people to reach their potential, that do not discriminate unfairly against certain groups and which value all people. We need to dispense with prejudice and intolerance.

People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in”
― Rosa Parks

Rosa was the spark that lit the tinder. It is hard to believe that such a short time ago, in the 1960s, the United States stringently practiced apartheid. The Southern States regarded negroes as of less worth than whites and created a policy of segregation where they were treated as second-class citizens. Blacks had separate facilities that were inferior to white – bus seats, drinking fountains, restaurants, schools …………  It was despicable. Rosa refused to move to the back of the bus and give up her seat. It started things.

As a white boy in England it was Bob Dylan who raised my awareness and sensibilities. I was passionate about equality, fairness and justice and I still am. The worth of a human being is the worth of their personality not their colour.

The Klan had used fear, intimidation and murder to brutally oppress over African-Americans who sought justice and equality and it sought to respond to the young workers of the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the same way. Charles B. Rangel

They used lynchings, threats and violence to intimidate. They burnt down homes and churches, beat and shot activists and young kids. I well remember Emit Till, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers ……… It is a legacy of shame.

Young college students went down from the North to assist black people in registering to vote. I well remember the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. They were callously killed and thrown in a swamp. The Ku Klux Klan and the other white supremacist groups need outlawing and prosecuting or their continuing hate crime.

By the 1960s, many of us believed that the Civil Rights Movement could eliminate racism in America during our lifetime. But despite significant progress, racism remains. Bill Cosby

Yes – unfortunately racism still remains with us. Things have improved but, as can be seen with the ‘Black Lives Matter’ campaign, there is still a way to go. Black, white, yellow, brown and red need to work together to create a better, fairer, world.

In the ’60s, when I was growing up, one of the great elements of American culture was the protest song. There were songs about the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the antiwar movement. It wasn’t just Bob Dylan, it was everybody at the time. George Clooney

I remember those sixties days of idealism well. We thought we were going to change the world. I was only discussing on the blog recently how that has failed. Progress has been made regarding race and gender and there were the great environmental groups, but so many of those young idealists not only gave up on their ideals but jumped straight back in and became as bad, or even worse, that their predecessors. The problems of environment, gender and race are still there. We desperately need a new Bob Dylan and a new generation of idealists.

The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything. Carol Moseley Braun

I think that is true. There is hope.

That’s what he was saying, the civil rights movement – judge me for my character, not how black my skin is, not how yellow my skin is, how short I am, how tall or fat or thin; It’s by my character. Pam Grier

Martin Luther King was right! Let’s hope we can move to that! Much progress has been made. The road is long. It requires more effort.