Today, CNN reported the passing of Rosa Parks. 50 years ago, Ms. Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. To put things in perspective, I was born just seven years later in 1962. My parents owned a three-story brownstone at 7427 Wentworth in Chicago, which they purchased for $27,000. They owned two luxury cars -- and this was all before the passage of the civil rights amendment in 1964, but it certainly led to it. See, they were part of what was an emerging black middle class, and it's important to remember this in the face of too many "poor, black, ghetto" stereotypes presented on TV. I didn't grow up in a ghetto. Where I'm going with this is that my parents -- Zennie Abraham Sr., and Pat Abraham -- were very much a part of what shaped African American history. They lived the simple American Dream of a car and a house and enough money to have some freedom. They believed in what was possble for them, and so passed that on to me. I sometime