If you ever want to know where I got my fire for fighting for racial and social equality, you dont need to look any further than my Aunt Dovey J. Rountree, who turns 100 today and lives in Charlotte, NC. Dovey was born exactly 100 years ago today in the segregated south, where a confederate flag didnt simply mean heritage. It meant much worse and Doveys family as well as any other black family at that time were in constant fear of what could and WOULD happen to them if they didnt know their place. Dovey was raised by her Grandmother, who constantly suffered foot pain from an incident with a slave master who had attempted to rape her when grandma was a teenager. Doveys grandmother fought back and the slave master broke both of her feet. Doveys grandmother fought everything in those days with the same fierceness that she fought that slavemaster. She imprinted that fierceness on Dovey, who became no less a fighter throughout her decades long career as a WWII veteran, lawyer, civil rights icon, and minister with the AME Church. Dovey was a protege of Dr. Mary Mcleod Bethune, and under Dr. Bethunes guidance was selected to be one of the first African American Women in the Womans Army Auxiliary Corps during WWII. While serving with the WAC, Dovey fought HARD to further integrate the corps. First Lady Michelle Obama would later comment that It is on the shoulders of people like Dovey Johnson Roundtree that we stand today, and it is with her commitment to our core ideals that we will continue moving toward a better tomorrow. She enrolled at Howard Universitys School of Law in 1947 and was 1 of only 5 women in her class. She was mentored and worked with none other than Thurgood Marshall during her time as a student, and later as a practicing civil rights lawyer. Her 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the separate but equal doctrine in the field of interstate bus transportation by a court or federal administrative body. An obvious supporter of civil rights, Dovey worked directly with many of the civil rights eras most notable names, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Roundtree was saluted by First Lady Michelle Obama on the occasion of the release of her 2009 autobiography Justice Older than the Law, which Roundtree co-authored with Washington journalist Katie McCabe and which won the 2009 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Dovey is probably one of the greatest civil rights fighters that youve NEVER heard of. I cant tell you what it felt like to actually be able to sit down and listen to her talk for hours (literally!) about her life and the things shes experienced. So yeah, this is where I get it from. My posts about racism, and about racial equality. I got that from her. The reason why I speak out against injustices like these, and not simply be quiet about it, as has been suggested by some of my FB friends, is because of her. Dovey taught me that these issues dont go away when you stop talking about them. They get worse, because our silence enables the people who perpetrate these injustices to keep doing what theyre doing. My Aunt Dovey J. Roundtree is one of the reasons why my life isnt just about painting Superheroes ;) Happy Birthday, Aunt Dovey, So proud that youre still here 100 years later.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 15:47:20 +0000
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