For those on the Left -- especially those in the black community who discount her blackness because she dares to espuse conservative principles -- this should serve as a reminder that Condoleezza Rice knows well just how far the nation has come as part of the struggle for civil rights, and exactly which people were and are the real enemies of African-Americans.

Forty-two years after the church bombing that killed four little girls and inflamed the civil rights movement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped honor them Saturday by recalling one of the victims as a friend with whom she played with dolls and sang in musicals.

On the second day of a trip to highlight the civil rights era as an example for countries struggling to achieve democracy, Ms. Rice and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain visited the 16th Street Baptist Church, where the bombings occurred, and watched as plaques honoring the girls were unveiled.

"As God would have it, they were at Sunday school when America experienced homegrown terrorists of the worst sort," Ms. Rice said in an emotional ceremony at a park across the street from the church, which was bombed in 1963. In her speech, she sought to connect her childhood in the segregated South to her work as the first African-American woman to be the nation's top diplomat.

"It was meant to shatter our spirit," she said of the bombing. "It was meant to say that we shouldn't rise up. Just a few weeks after Dr. Martin Luther King said, 'I have a dream,' it was meant to tell us that, no, we didn't have a dream, and that dream was going to be denied."

For listeners, particularly Mr. Straw and visiting Britons, the ceremony was a reminder of how much had changed since the city of Ms. Rice's birth was known as "Bombingham," when it was inconceivable that someone from her tight-knit, middle-class, churchgoing community could rise to such prominence.

Four little girls were murdered that day, by those who would stand in the way of the dream of freedom and equality that was and is at the heart of what it means to be an American. They were Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair.

"Denise was my friend," Ms. Rice said. "We played together, we sang together in little musicals. We were children together, and we played with dolls. And that picture of Denise with the dolls will always be near and dear to my heart."

And I would argue that contributions made to this country by Dr. Condoleezza Rice stands as one of the great memorials to her friend -- and to all who sacrificed and died so that she could rise to the place she is today. Those who dishonor her dishonor them and that cause.

And would someone please get the editors at the New York Times a copy of their own stylebook -- given that the Secretary of State has an earned doctorate, it is inappropriate to refer to her as "Ms. Rice".

(UPDATE: Gene Robinson of the Washington Post writes a different sort of view about Rice's visit to Alabama.)

Posted by: Greg at 06:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 543 words, total size 3 kb.