This article (posted at Polipundit) is a stunning tribute to Condoleezza Rice who will be taking the baton from another Great Black American and Hero, Colin Powell…
In September 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the eulogy for three of the four girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. What King could not know was that, within earshot of the blast, just blocks away at her father’s church, was another little black girl, a friend of the youngest victim, who 42 years later would be on the verge of becoming America’s foremost diplomat.
This year, the Martin Luther King holiday, marking what would have been his 76th birthday, falls on Jan. 17. The next day, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opens hearings on the nomination of Condoleezza Rice to succeed Colin Powell as secretary of state.
And, her, oh so profound words to the black journalists in 2002…
As she told the National Association of Black Journalists two summers ago, those who think the Iraqis are unready or uninterested in freedom are echoing the racist appraisal of black people when she was growing up.
“The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad,” she said.