Presumably, a woman named Vicki Johnstone-Graf teaches school in the Niagara Falls City School District. She is, at any rate, the secretary-treasurer of the teachers union here.
She also possesses a deep, fundamental ignorance so stunning in its depth as to make one wonder where she got her own education and -- regardless of what institution gave her a diploma -- how she passed the psychological testing administered by the district to enable her to be around children on a daily basis.
Ten schoolteachers were fired last week for violating the district's residency requirement. It is not our purpose to argue the merits or faults of the requirement, suffice it to say that it exists, it is a part of the district's contract with the teachers union, and every single teacher working for the union knew of it when they signed on to teach here.
Rosa Parks, as every one of you save Johnstone-Graf probably already knows, was an American hero. In 1955 she refused to move to the rear of a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., sitting instead in a seat reserved for white people.
They lynched black people in Montgomery in 1955. Just a few months earlier, 14-year-old Emmett Till, the fiery preacher George W. Lee and civil rights leader Lamar Smith were all murdered near Montgomery. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, she did so knowing full well what the consequences might be.
Parks was arrested, and Dr. Martin Luther King launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Many historians see Parks' courageous act as the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement in this country.
She was later awarded the Congressional Gold Medal -- the highest civilian honor our nation can bestow -- and when she died she was accorded the honor of lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. She was buried with full military honors and, if you go to Washington today, you can look at a statue of her in the capitol's Statuary Hall.
Last week, Johnstone-Graf told school board members she and other schoolteachers here were just like Rosa Parks.
"It is my opinion that the residency requirement is an infringement of our civil liberties," she said. "Freedom to choose where we live is as important as Rosa Parks' decision to choose where she sat on the bus."
Her statement was not only ignorant but offensive. The teachers chose where to live when they accepted a position that required them to live in Niagara Falls.
Johnstone-Graf owes Rosa Parks an apology.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 25 2009 |