A New Chapter in American History Begins

I grew up in the South. I know something about discrimination and prejudice because I saw it first-hand. I heard hateful, racist comments from relatives before I was old enough to know what racist meant. I started school just a few years after Brown vs Board of Education ended de jure school segregation, even though de facto segregation still existed. As a child during the early years of the Civil Rights movement, I sat through church meetings at which church leaders planned how to keep "undesirables" from joining our Baptist church. At the time of my ordination to ministry, I was interrogated by a minister, a friend of the family, about whether or not I would refuse to officiate at a wedding for a mixed-race couple.

The election of Barack Obama has been hailed - and rightly so - as a great advance in racial relationships in our country. Certainly, his election is something that many who grew up in the south - on either side of the issue - thought would never happen.

Yet, as a nation, we need to see this election as an important symbol of what can happen but not as a final step in the journey toward true equal rights for all people. This election is just the first page of the new chapter. It will only be when all people have the opportunity to seek and keep jobs, when all people are able to live wherever they want in a community, when all people have access to adequate health care, and when all people are accorded the same basic civil rights will we be able to say that, indeed, a new day has dawned in America.

May we endeavor to work for that shining new day to arrive.