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The Torchbearer ROSA PARKS

How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready. --From "Rosa," in On the Bus with Rosa Parks by Rita Dove

We know the story. One December evening, a woman left work and boarded a bus for home. She was tired; her feet ached. But this was Montgomery, Ala., in 1955, and as the bus became crowded, the woman, a black woman, was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger. When she remained seated, that simple decision eventually led to the disintegration of institutionalized segregation in the South, ushering in a new...

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President BARACK OBAMA, at NATO talks involving over 50 world leaders, describing the withdrawal of 130,000 combat troops from Afghanistan, planned for the end of 2014
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