Dec. 28:

The third day of Kwanzaa is devoted to Ujima – the principle of collective work and responsibility.

1816 - The American Coloniza­tion Society was organized by white abolitionist Rob­ert Finley with the aim of return­ing freed and enslaved people to new and free lives in Africa.

In 10 years, the ACS took nearly 3,000 Black people to Afri­ca. They helped to form what are today the West African nations of Liberia and Sierra Leone.

1956 - A sniper shot Rosa Jordan, a 22-year-old pregnant woman, as she sat on a Montgomery bus just three days after Christmas. She was eight months pregnant and headed to her job across town.

The still unknown sniper shot at a desegregated bus traveling through a Black neighborhood, when Jordan was shot in one leg, it exited and into her other leg.

Jordan was transported to Oak Street General Hospital, but doctors were hesitant to remove a bullet lodged in her leg for fear that it could spark premature labor. Instead, Jordan was told she would have to remain in the hospital for the duration of her pregnancy.

After the bus driver and passengers were questioned at police headquarters, the bus resumed service. Less than an hour later, near the same neighborhood, the same bus was again targeted by snipers. This time, no one was hit.

Her baby, Rose Timmons, was born on January 16, 1957, less than a month after she and her mother survived the attempt to kill them.

Jordan suffered from pain in her legs until her death in 2008.  A few months before Rosa Jordan died, her son, Tommy, was at her hospital bedside as they heard the news that Barack Obama was nominated by a major party to become President of the United States.

Together, they cried.  “I lived to see this,” she told him. Tommy slowed his telling as he remembered his mother. “I *lived* to see this.”