Ben Brown, Internet Rockstar Feverish Velocity

Rosa sat…

Twitter’s election coverage just told me that “Martin” is a recent political buzzword. Why? People are quoting this All Things Considered piece from this evening:

Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running so our children can fly.

Inspiring!

Using the Twitter search, I went back a few hours into the archives and noticed something potentially interesting. It’s 10pm here, and people only just started furiously quoting the NPR piece roughly 5 or 6 hours ago, probably right about when All Things Considered aired.

However, the quote was tweeted a few times before the NPR piece, and it seems like most of these were retweets from one source. The first person to tweet this quote, according to Twitter, was kharimosley, who tweeted it 4 days ago, way before the NPR piece aired!

The NPR piece itself says that the source of the quote is “a text message he got from a friend.” I wonder if that text message was kharimosley’s original tweet?

Google found this Democratic Underground forum post with the quote too from about the same time, also from NPR. In that forum, someone suggests changing “Martin walked” to “Martin marched”.

There’s also this slightly different version of the phrase in this music forum from early this morning:

Crispus Attucks, a black man became the first to fall in the Revolutionary War: Crispus fell, so Rosa Parks could sit. Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King, Jr. could march. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched so Barack Obama could run. Barack is running so our children can FLY! ~author unknown

Interesting twist.

20 hours ago, Google found this page with the phrase, that links to this PowerPoint hosted on Ning named “RosasatsoMartincouldwalk.ppt” It only has one slide in it - pictures of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and Barack Obama, above the quote and “SAVE THE DATE 11/4/08.”

So someone is making a get out the vote poster in Powerpoint and blogging about it on their dating network profile 15 hours before the phrase is broadcast on NPR. Where did it come from?

The earliest mention I could find on Google was from this MySpace journal page from a dude named Brandan, way back on June 5, 2008. Coincidentally, he used the “Martin marched” version, which, in the light of the NPR-quoting, seems to have been beaten out in favor of “Martin walked.”

I emailed Brandan to see if he could tell me where he heard the phrase. I’ll post an update if he gets back to me.

Update

Twitter user Razorfizh tells me that this quote originated with Senator Cleo Fields at the State of the Black Union event in February 2008. I looked it up and was able to find this press release from Tavis Smiley who moderated the event, which includes the original, slightly less grandiose phrasing:

Rosa Parks sat down so we could stand up. Martin Luther King marched so Jesse Jackson could run. Jesse Jackson ran so Obama could win.

It looks like Senator Fields originated this phrase, but he did not include the final clause about our children flying.

My new MySpace friend/Detroit hip hop MC Brandan replied to my questions and said, “The phrase came from a conversation with a friend where I said ‘Martin marched so Obama could run.’ Then I was going to use it in a song I was writing. I thought about Rosa Parks sitting and attached that. My mother added so our children can fly. The children can fly line seemed a bit much but I kept it. I made a couple of videos and added the phrase in all of them.”

From New Orleans in February to Detroit in June to NPR in October to Twitter minutes later…