Whether I was growing up in Ft. Worth
or the climes of San Francisco, I experienced the touch of racism in
everyday life in some way. The simple act of walking to school along a
fringe ghetto in a business district was a major act of faith. The
stevedores milling at the dock of the local feed store loved to tease
the colored kids as we walked back and forth to school. I was a
rebellious sort who freely dispensed what was on my mind to the horror
of my schoolmates. Many a day was spent running for my life with husky
men panting at my heels because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut at their
taunts and racial slurs. This came to set me apart. As a result of my
early experiences, I became a local track star with the opportunity to
try out for the Olympics in the company of Wilma Rudolph. I know that
early life experience often prepares you for greater acts in life.

I know what it is like to be kicked out
of a Walgreen’s Drug Store because they wouldn’t serve me at the
fountain. I steadfastly refused to go to the back door for anything.
Like my grandmother said, I wasn’t the shrinking violet of my
predecessors. I believed in my right to visit the park of my choice
regardless of the signage and quickly rebuffed the taunts of the local
police that told me go home and get dressed in more conservative
attire. I was a rebel with a cause.

That
cause led me overseas in the military when most of nation was plunged
in a time of racial upheaval and riots. I was quietly separated and
protected overseas from the hubbub and confusion of American
mistreatment in those times with one exception. Instead I learned the
lies that white servicemen told about blacks to so many foreigners.
When those foreigners met me, they came to confide that they had
originally expected me to be no more than a dumb brute because of my
skin color. The well had been poisoned, but through my human witness
and experience, I was able to crush and put down the oppression and the
poison simply by living my life.

When a serviceman let racism get the
best of him by burning a cross on the lawn of my armed forces dwelling,
the heavy hand of the government took care of the matter once and for
all. I planted flowers in the shape of the cross that had been
emblazoned on the hill for all to see. For years, blacks have been
planting flowers in the burned out grass and finally we have come to
see the results of our patience and endurance as national ignorance and
rage has been put down.

As
I watched Barack Obama standing on stage in Grant Park before what
seemed an endless expanse of cheering humanity of all nationalities, I
realized that years of planting flowers in the burned out soil of
racism had brought the nation to a new place and time even if the
nation still bore the unseemly scars. I never dreamed that a man just
like my children would someday hold public office as President of the
United States. I believe that Barack Obama is the man that God chose to
do the job that can deliver this nation from sin and death of the past.
This is the nation’s true opportunity to achieve singular greatness
despite the plague of a dismal national economy and the hatred of a
few. Regardless of what Barack Obama’s time in office brings the
nation, we can be confident that God is in control. I stand in
amazement of the community that I have witnessed.