@Diane,
I remember my sense of outrage and disgust when I first travelled through the South , as a teenager in the late 1950's, and actually saw rest rooms and water fountains labelled "Whites Only" and "Colored Only". My immediate impulse, as a young white person, was to want to drink from the "Colored Only" fountain as the only act of protest and defiance I could think to muster. As I walked toward that fountain, my father gave me a menacing look and said, "Don't you dare do that. Remember where we are." He meant well. He was genuinely frightened of my starting trouble, and he was only trying to protect me. We were in America, but it seemed like hostile territory. I listened to my father, but felt profoundly disturbed.
When the civil rights movement began I felt relieved and happy that there was a movement I could connect to. The naked racial hatred that was exposed--the murders, the bombings, the people set upon with hoses and dogs--came into my home through the black and white images on our TV. I was horrified that this was my country. I wanted to do anything I could to change it. I marched, and protested, and joined sit-in demonstrations. I saw one of my college professors threatened with loss of his job because his picture landed on the front page of the newspaper showing him stretched out on the floor of an apartment building with a group protesting housing discrimination in our area. The university considered him an embarrassment, and they did come close to firing him. I admired him and the example he provided.
When Dr. King said, "I have a dream..." I shared that dream. I wanted that dream to come true for my fellow citizens and for the good of my country. I cheered Bobby Kennedy as he enforced the law as Attorney General, and later delivered messages of hope as a Senator. I despised people like Gov. George Wallace and Lester Maddox. The country was divided into good guys and bad guys. I sang "We shall overcome" and I believed it. And, when Dr. King was murdered, I wept and felt that hope had died.
My youthful passion for social and racial equality never left me, but progress in my country appeared to stagnate. We had knocked down the obvious barriers--in voting, and in segregation in housing and education--but poverty and lack of hope continued to blight our inner cities and creep into our suburbs, bringing with them crime and drug abuse. I saw many more blacks around me graduating from college, going to graduate school and entering the middle class and the professions. More blacks appeared in starring roles on TV and in the movies. More blacks were elected to public office. We were moving in the right direction, but slowly. White America was growing more comfortable having all those non-white faces around them, in positions of equality and authority.
But our prisons continued to disproportionately fill with blacks, substandard schools remained in poor black neighborhoods, drug traffic was allowed to thrive in black neighborhoods until it spilled over and disturbed white neighborhoods with it's direct or indirect effects. We still seemed like two separate societies divided along both racial and economic lines. The poor black kids I met still dreamed of becoming only basketball or rap stars, with no hope of other ambitions, or even of just entering the main stream. When I'd urge them to stay in school and aim for a good job or a profession they'd sometimes tell me they weren't interested in "acting white". Listening to those kids just made me feel sad and dispirited that the American Dream really did not seem to exist for them. When I talked with their mothers I realized that good intentions and love were often not enough to save your child from the street culture. Kids were being killed on the way home from school or in drive-by shootings because they belonged to the wrong gang or had a beef with the wrong person. Drugs and guns offered a sense of power to the powerless. There was very little hope. These pockets of despair would not make anyone proud of their country.
For the first time in my life, I had a chance to do something yesterday that would really signify true equality and social change. I was able to pull a lever and vote for our first African American president. This was something I had hoped for all of my life, particularly since I had laid eyes on that "Colored Only" water fountain. It was why I had protested and demonstrated in the 60's. It was also something I never believed I would be able to do in my lifetime.
I did not vote for Mr. Obama because he is black--I voted for him because I believe that he is a man of exceptional ability and intelligence, and I share his vision for our country. But I feel overcome with joy that my country has progressed so far that a majority of my fellow citizens are no longer blinded by race and mistrustful of a man because of his skin color. I am happy that African American children will really know that in our country anything is possible for them. Today, I am very proud of my country, and much more hopeful about our future. Dr King's dream has come true.
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