In Living Memory

I was just watching a report on who will be attending the Inauguration. Along with the various dignitaries, attendees include:

-- Seven of the nine children who walked to school in Little Rock, Arkansas accompanied by the 101st Airborne, while the "God-Fearing white folk" screamed curses at them and the Governor of a neighboring state brought people to their feet, cheering, as he declared "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"

-- Most of the remaining Tuskeegee Airmen, who went to war in an army that wouldn't let them eat in the same building as their fellow pilots, and performed with such "exemplary intrepidity and superior airmanship" that all-white bomber squadrons fought to get them as fighter escorts. They came home to Jim Crow laws and communities that lynched several of their number for speaking with white folks as if they were equals.

When I was very young (I'm 61, BTW) I remember seeing newsreels of the children walking to the Little Rock schools. I remember seeing newsreels of James Meridith being escorted to his classes at "ol' Miss" ..... the same university where Barack Obama participated in a President Debate. As a Basic Trainee at Amarillo Air Base (1966), I remember the Coromantee Brotherhood taking over the chow hall as a protest against limited career opportunities. When I was assigned to Germany the next year, they were still giving people briefings about not getting upset when you saw "mixed couples" in public. I have friends whose fathers served as mess stewards and cabin attendants in the U.S. Navy, knowing they would never get any better assignment, but still willing to serve.

A few days back, I heard someone talking about the changes "within living memory" that resulted in African American candidates being taken seriously during the past couple decades. The whole process ends tomorrow at noon. Well, not the whole process. As far as an African American candidate making it to the White House it ends. We still have a lot of ground to cover.

I heard Chappie James say one time: " The two kinds of people we don't need are the first and the only." It took a long time to get past people being called "the first Black four-star General" or "the first Female General" or the "first Hispanic General". While you can count the total number of African-American U.S. Senators on one hand, we have a ways to go. While we still find it necessary to qualify descriptions with gender or ethnicity, we have a ways to go.

But when we talk about the changes "within living memory" we are talking about MY memory ..... and that doesn't stretch that far back. The pace of change is accelerating, folks. We have gotten farther in the first 24 years of my son's life than we did in the first 30 years of mine. I find that encouraging.