In my e-mail this morning, I came across a message from Burns Strider of the Eleison Group about what this day means to him:
"On Monday morning, MLK Day, I will do what I have been doing for over 15 years... it is the only day of the year my wife would allow such a tradition.
Awaking early, I fire up the CD player, turn up the volume, hit play and Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech reverberates off the walls of our house until everyone is awake and downstairs listening to the speech and me talk about attending my native Mississippi county's NAACP Freedom Banquets with my father and the waning remnants of the Jim Crow during my youthful 1970's.
Strider goes on to write about how his two children see tomorrow's inauguration of Barack Obama:
Barack Obama will soon be sworn in. My boys know more about him and his family than one would think... where they are from, their enjoyment of basketball, where the Obama children go to school and on and on.
The whole concept that Barack Obama could not be President simply because he is black does not even resonate in their little brains.
Can you imagine an America where such concepts do not exist? Dr. King and Mother Parks did.
A new President will soon forever expand our composite of Presidents.
Little children all over the nation will develop into adults who were led into the future by an African American, or, without diminishing ethnic heritage, should I just say, who were led by just another American like Washington, Lincoln, JFK or Clinton.
Color blind!
Read the entire entry on BeliefNet.com..
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