Erasing the line
Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist of the Lexington Herald-Leader. His work also appears in USA Today.
The visual obit for civil rights icon Rosa Parks was an easy one. Just put her in the front seat of a ‘50s-era bus, dial the route destination window to Pearly Gates, Paradise or Promised Land and take the afternoon off. These cartoonists took a higher road. In recent years, Parks had lamented the complacency of black youth, so Paul Combs of the Tampa Tribune used that as his vehicle. The Charlotte Observer’s Kevin Siers drove home his very moving point by seating a pair of patriotic sisters behind Parks. My slightly more cynical take was that all this should be discussed in resegregated inner-city schools. Hmm ... I wonder how many such schools bear the name Rosa Parks?
-- Joel Pett