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 = The Bootheel Sharecroppers' Strike of 1939: = = //A Forgotten Piece of History// =

 //"If ever there was a modern David and Goliath story this is it. An epic tale of courage and perseverance, race and class, imagination and endurance."  // Sixteen years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama…Eighteen years before the “Little Rock Nine” courageously opened the doors to school integration…Twenty-nine years before Martin Luther King led a protest march of sanitation workers through the streets of Memphis, a little-known event occurred right here in our own backyard – the Missouri Bootheel – a protest which historians say lit a spark of hope that flamed the fires of the Civil Rights Movement.
 * - Robin D.G. Kelley, University of Southern California **