Montgomery officials announced today that present and future police and fire personnel will be required to attend an eight hour class on the city's racial history.
The city's segregationist past means interactions between cops and firefighters and citizens, especially African-American citizens, carry some heavy baggage.
The fact that the press conference comes the week the Martin Luther King Memorial opens in D.C. is appropriate, given his own "interactions" with the police here.
While the Todd Road incident, the beating of the freedom riders at the Montgomery Greyhound station, and Rosa Parks arrest were major events in the development of the mistrust between cops and people, there must be many thousands of smaller, more subtle, and maybe even more hurtful incidents that occurred, the stories passed down in families.
The class was developed by the Troy University Rosa Parks Museum.
Glad to know this. I hope that similar classes can be opened for the public.
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