We Shall Overcome

The tears have come - I knew they would. It's strange that they took so long.

My mom called with her joyful tears and choked me up. She recalled 1964 when she was barely an adult and I was just learning about the wider world. Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman had gone missing, murdered by KKK racists in Mississippi, just beyond the meaningless boundary from where we lived in Memphis. I was barely old enough to understand, no, I'm still too young to understand, how vicious those evil people were. What I remember from that time is that my parents were holding their breath for the time when the bodies were found.

Mom recounted how from her own youth she had no longer considered her Methodist pastor to be Christian after his objections to Brown v. the Board of Education. Too early, he had preached, when too late was the truth.

Now, though, all that work, all those compromises, all that waiting is over. I had not thought that this day would come so soon, but I am glad that it has. Barack Obama won me over with his speech on race not just to support but to belief in his ability to transform America.

Someday? Someday is here.