1950s Comic Tells Story of Martin Luther King Jr and the Montgomery Protest

Archivist Ethan Persoff has an impressive collection of old-timey education comic oddities, and between the double entendre-laden ads and government propaganda you'll find an awesome comic about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott, published by the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the late 1950s. Remember when comics were edu-taining? I don't either. The MLK comic is simply and forcefully drawn in that wonderful Golden Age style, and the passages near the end detailing King's philosophy of nonviolent social change are quite moving.

It's worth noting, however, that the panels dealing with Rosa Park's famous refusal to give up her seat perpetuate a common misunderstanding of the incident...hit the jump for the panel, and what's wrong with it.

This panel tells the Rosa Parks story as most kids learn it; Parks was tired and simply chose not to give up her seat. It's understandable and identifiable, but we're encouraged to see Parks as an ordinary woman who for some intangible reason decided to do what no one else would.

But the truth is Rosa Parks did not fall into activism by chance; she had been an active figure in movements for social change for years before the incident in Montgomery. Parks had the following to say in her 1992 autobiography (as quoted on Parks' Wikipedia page):

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

There you have it. Question everything, go check out your local MLK parade, enjoy your day off.

Web Game of the Week (Classic Edition): Grow RPG

Every Thursday, intrepid Geekanerd correspondent Johnny clues you in on the best way to kill the last 16 hours of the work week.

An internet classic, Grow RPG is without a doubt the best of the Grow games from Eyemaze. The concept? Simple -- defeat the Mephistopheles-like dragon and his minions (located at the top) by dragging and dropping the eight items on the sides of the screen into the “GROW” icon in the correct order. However, figuring out the correct order is determined by how each item develops as more items are entered into the grow world. At the end, your trusty knight (at the bottom) goes through the whole game, RPG style, to try to defeat the enemies. Depending on how incorrectly (or correctly) you chose the items, you will see how the knight succeeds and fails.

Tips 'N' Strategies after the jump...


Gameplay:
Super easy, just drag and drop the eight items on the sides of the screen into the “GROW” icon in the center. Preferable for those who do not have the dexterity for normal RPGs.

Strategies:
Write down the order in which you place the items into the center each time. This will help you deduce the solution. After all the items are placed, before the knight takes his journey, each item will show how many levels it developed or whether it is maxed out. Your goal is to max everything out. However, the number of levels it takes for each item to max out is for you to figure out.