I have a vivid memory of watching television with my mother and a black woman. We are all in a small sunny second floor room in a house in Pittsburgh. The television is next to an odd gas fireplace. I am on a couch. On the television is something I have never seen: a large racially integrated crowd. The crowd is singing “We shall overcome.” My mother and the woman are standing behind the couch. Both are crying. I suspect it was this event; but who can say?
A five years later it was easy to believe that a black man might be president. A few years later it was easy to believe a woman might be. But then, the Republican party’s Southern strategy, and sadly all that unwound.
We maybe turning that around. But this isn’t going to be easy. We are very polarized, there is a lot of angry hateful/fearful people out there. It’s is only an example, but let us not gloss over how awful Proposition 8 really is.
Wow. Barutiful — thank you.. I think maybe Lee was there? (Lee — are you lsitening? Dp you have this feed?) And, of course, Lewis was working in MS on voter registration the next year. And I remember thast your mother said that one of her sons was working that summer in Africa and one in Mississippi, and that the latter was in more danger.
I was the one that went to Africa. However, I was at the march. It was my privilege to hear about the dream in person. My most vivid image of the election on Tuesday is that of Rev. Jesse Jackson standing ‘alone’ unnoticed in the crowd at Grant Park crying.
Lee