Devotion Reader

What is parity in this society for Black people? Are we even close to achieving it? What would it look like...and how would our lives be different if we achieved it?

Parity itself, means equivalence and equality. It means that I have what you have—in equal proportions. Let’s put a “plain face” on parity in terms of what our communities could look like if we achieved it. Based on what I see, Black people are not on par with Whites. We deserve to be.

"They knew why they walked, and the knowledge was evident in the way they carried themselves. And as I watched them I knew that there was nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity."

The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott was the most effective economic social action conducted by Black Americans, and building on this remarkable non-violent protest lasting 381 days, nearly two decades of creative social action persisted by Black Americans in what became known as the Civil Rights Movement.

“As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation or Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own Emancipation Proclamation.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.