Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Change

85 years ago, Evansville, Indiana, was home of the Grand Wizard of the Indiana KKK, and the governor of Indiana was a KKK member. Today, early voting in Evansville, Indiana happened. And:

For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she made it about halfway to the door before collapsing in a nearby chair, where she began weeping uncontrollably. When we rushed over to help we realized that she wasn't in trouble at all but she had not truly believed, until she left the booth, that she would ever live long enough to cast a vote for an African-American for president.
The KKK ruled Indiana when this old woman was a child. Now she is voting for a black man for President. There are still racists and violent bigots of all sorts in America. But that's change, and it's change to be proud of, even if there is so much more left to do.

-- Badtux the Sombre Penguin

3 comments:

  1. my nephew, who's in eighth grade, was supposed to write a letter to frederick douglas. i asked him if his teacher knew that douglas was like dead and stuff, he said yeah.

    then we got talking, i suggested that he tell mr. douglas that there was some real progress which came out of the work of the abolitionists. that things had reached a place where it was likely that we will elect an african american as our president.

    he thought about that for a long time. then he wrote a beautiful letter.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can you post that letter for us, MB? Out of the mouths of babes...

    (Except an 8th-grader isn't exactly a babe. In fact, now that I think back, I was a nasty little bastard at that age. OK, out of the mouths of bastards. Anything beautiful coming from onna them is double-good.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. The stepmonster was from Indiana.

    ReplyDelete

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