The "Civil Rights Issue of our Day."

Condi Rice last night at the Republican Convention:

"Today, when I can look at your zip code and I can tell whether you’re going to get a good education, can I honestly say it does not matter where you came from, it matters where you are going? The crisis in K-12 education is a threat to the very fabric of who we are.

My mom was a teacher. I respect the profession. We need great teachers, not poor ones and not mediocre ones. We have to have high standards for our kids, because self-esteem comes from achievement, not from lax standards and false praise.

And we need to give parents greater choice, particularly, particularly poor parents whose kids, very often minorities, are trapped in failing neighborhood schools. This is the civil rights issue of our day.”

Condi Rice knows something about civil rights.  She closed her speech at tthe Republican Convention  with the following:

         " And on a personal note, a little girl grows up in Jim Crow

Birmingham. The segregated city of the south where her parents

cannot take her to a movie theater or to restaurants, but they

have convinced that even if she cannot have it hamburger at

Woolworths, she can be the president of the United States if she

wanted to be, and she becomes the secretary of state.

(APPLAUSE)

Yes, yes. Yes. Yes, America has a way of making the

impossible seemed inevitable in retrospect, but we know it was

never inevitable. It took leadership. And it took courage. And

it's a belief that our values. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have

the integrity and the experience and the vision to lead us.

They know who we are. They know who we want to be. They know

who we are in the world and what we offer.

That is why -- that is why this is a moment and an election

of consequence. Because it just has to be that the freest most

compassionate country on the face of the earth will continue to

be the most powerful and the beacon for prosperity and the party

across the world.

God bless you and God bless this extraordinary country,

this exceptional country: The United States of America."

As someone who remembers Bull Connor, her speech last night,  brought tears to my eyes

Connor, in Birmingham. infamously directed the use of fire hoses, and police attack dogs against peaceful demonstrators, including children. His aggressive tactics backfired when the spectacle of the brutality was broadcast on national television