Pearl Cleage: It is all one struggle
CBS News asked noted figures in the arts, business and politics about their experience in today's civil rights movement, or about figures who inspired them in their activism.
Pearl Cleage, author, playwright
Is there something that you'd like to share about your personal connection to civil rights issues?
As a child of, and participant in, the civil rights movement, I am proud of my generation of activists for their courage, their persistence and their insanely, endearingly optimistic view that our country could change for the better.
It turns out that we were right, too, in spite of the screeching of a minority among the American citizenry who are so frightened of the future they are prepared to sabotage it in a classic case of cutting off that nose to spite that face.
Be that as it may, the country and the civil rights movement continue to grow and evolve and adapt to the changing face of America and the complexity of membership in an often-volatile global community. We are beginning to understand more deeply that civil rights are really human rights, and that we just confront joyfully the new challenges and new tactics that will emerge as the struggle for human freedom becomes a global force for positive change across the world.
And that is how it should be.
As an activist, I often find myself caught up in the details of which struggle should demand my attention and my resources at any given moment. But the poet in me always steps forward to remind me that it is all one struggle, as we are all one people. The rest is just the details.
For more info:
- pearlcleage.net
- Follow Pearl Cleage on Twitter (@pcleage) and Facebook
- "Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons and Love Affairs" by Pearl Cleage (Atria Books); Also available in eBook format