Mr. President

Barack Obama's election this week to the highest office in the land and the most powerful office in the world was near earth-shattering. It just hasn't been that long ago when such a proposition was unthinkable, even laughable to some. But it happened, and we are so much the better for it. I was born in 1940 in Alabama and grew up (some would allege otherwise) there. The living conditions for black people was abysmal, and I don't hesitate to compare the Alabama I grew up in to South Africa and its system of apartheid. Whites in much of the American South simply had the power of life and death over black people.

I was fortunate to have had a role model, my grandfather, who never judged a human being by any measure but the content of his character. He taught me that people are pretty much the same all over, and he treated everybody with respect. But I never could have wildly imagined that a man of African descent would be elected president in my lifetime. Unless you know how horrible life could be for a black person back then, you can't know what a wondrous thing has taken place. It feels like my beloved country is getting its soul back.