For David Walker, who appealed, in no uncertain terms,For William Lloyd Garrison, liberator, who kept his vow,

For Sojourner Truth,

For Gerrit Smith, who overcame privilege,

For John Brown, mad revolutionary, proud race traitor,

For Harriet Beecher Stowe,

For Frederick Douglass, greatest mind of a generation,

For Lucy Parsons, the IWW, and the Haymarket martyrs,

For Harriet Tubman,

For Silas Soule, who would not be party to genocide,

For the students of R.R. Moton High School, who said no more,

For Paul Robeson, whose charges will be answered,

For Thurgood Marshall, justice,

For Ruby McCollum, not insane,

For Fred Shuttlesworth, undeterred by chains,

For Autherine Lucy, and a 36-year struggle for education,

For the Freedom Riders,

For Georgia Mae Turner, who registered to vote,

For James Forman, who helped her,

For Bill Sutherland, internationalist father,

For Fannie Lou Hamer,

For the Little Rock Nine, child soldiers,

For Miss Mary Hamilton,

For Ruby Sales,

For Citizenship Schools, Highlander Schools, and all who teach to liberate,

For Baton Rouge, Montgomery, Tallahassee, Orangeburg, Tuskegee, Greensboro,

Charlotte, Nashville, Baltimore, Savannah, Jackson State, Monroe, McComb,

Albany, Clarksdale, Jackson State, Birmingham, Selma, Hattiesburg,

Harlem and Watts,

For the Southern Christian League Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, the Congress of Racial Equality,

For Emmett Till, Lamar Smith, John Earle Reese, Medgar Evers, William Moore, Addie

ae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Virgil Ware,

Herbert Lee, Jimmy Jackson Lee, Henry Dee, James Earl Chaney, Andrew

Goodman, Michael Schwerner, the Martinsville Seven – for all the martyrs,

For Martin, Malcolm, and Rosa,

For James Baldwin,

For Langston and Ralph,

For Ruby Dee,

For Miriam Makeba – Mama Africa,

For the Panthers,

For Critical Resistance, the Jericho Project, INCITE! and Zapatistas the world over,

For all who still struggle, who keep the revolutionary spirit of justice alive,

Who know the difference between symbol and change, and the value of both:

abrouk, L’Chaim

Presente!

Amandla!

ark Lance is a professor in the philosophy department and a professor and program director in the Program on Justice and Peace. He can be reached at lancethehoya.com. COGNITIVE DISSIDENT appears every other Friday.

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