Snow Melt

Today is an historic day

Fidál (Grace), 2 Sultán (Sovereignty), 165 BE – Tuesday, January 20, 2009 about 5:16 AM Pacific Time

Today Barack Obama, the first African-American president, takes office and moves into the white house. This has led me to look back over the last century. My mother was born in 1921 on a farm somewhere in Oklahoma. I was born in 1946 in a hospital in Blackwell, Oklahoma.

Grandpa Newland ran the farm by himself and did most of the farm chores by himself all most all year. However, when harvest time came he hired young African-American men to help him with the harvest. This was in the early part of the last century. The young men Grandpa hired were like every other honest man in the America at that time. They were just trying to make a living and feed their families. At that time, there weren't very many jobs they could apply for or get, they were doing their best to make a living in a culture that existed in America at the time.

I grew up in Blackwell. In all the years I lived there I can remember seeing only one or maybe two African-Americans in town and then only during the daylight hours. Blackwell was a "sundown town". There aren't too many American under the age of 50 who know what sundown town meant. A sundown town was any village, town or city where blacks were not allowed to stay after dark. African-Americans could come to town and work during the day, but they had to be out of town by sunset.

My mother is 87, I am 62 and we are living in a nation and culture that has change dramatically in the past 100 or so years. I can remember sitting in front of the TV set and watching the civil rights marches. The country and American culture has changed, the election of Mr. Obama has proved that, but there is still a long way to go before we live up to the words "all men are created equal".