by Brian Weberg
When I was seven years old I lived with my family in the suburbs of St. Louis. The only black people I knew were the maids who traveled out from the city each day to clean the homes of my neighbors. My town was all white and that was my world. I had some vague notion that another, separate world lived somewhere nearby. My sports hero was Willie Mays. Number 24.
When I was in the third grade we moved to the suburbs of Chicago--the segregated perimeter encircling the Windy City. It was 1961. Ernie Banks was my new hero. Number 14. Occasionally a group of black kids from the city would show up at the local YMCA where I spent much of my time. We would frolic in the swimming pool next to each other, but rarely with each other. In the summer of 1966 I was heading to high school where not a single person of color would be enrolled among my several thousand classmates. I was 14 years old, and in my America black people were maids and sports heroes and mostly mysteries.
I think my story is the story of millions of American kids who grew up in the post-war suburban baby boom. I tell it not because it is unique, but rather to underscore a more profound tale of the unsung heroes who stood up among us during those explosive times to raise our consciousness, fight for justice and perfect our nation. Out of those suburbs came voices calling for change. They were few in numbers at first and they were radical in relation to their place. One of them was my mom. In that summer of 1966 she took me to a local college to hear Martin Luther King speak. Each Sunday she and her close friend drove to the south side of Chicago to teach Sunday school at the African Methodist Episcopal Church—two lily white faces in a black world trying to do what they could to bridge the divide. As America came into a new consciousness about its racial challenges, my mom and her friends made sure I did too. She preached to me and my siblings, but her message was embodied in real works. Her path was not the path of millions, but rather in those days, of one in a million.
All of these thoughts were brought together for me by a comment made by a good friend just a few weeks ago. He spoke warmly of his three young children and how comforted he was that in their formative years they were witnessing a person of color in pursuit of the nation’s highest office. In his children’s world it would be normal for anyone of any race to be in any role in any place in America. Not only maids or sports heroes. Not mysteries. Not the narrow view that framed my world just 45 years ago.
No matter our political stripes, we cannot understate the historic and transformative power of this presidential election. If in no other way, its significance will be told in the lives of my friend’s children and millions of other kids of all races who will grow up with the real experience--and not just the ideal--that all of us are created equal. No doubt we still have a long way to go to make the dream real for all of us, but today I want to say thank you to my mom and to all those remarkable Americans who risked their comfort and friendships--and sometimes their safety--to speak and act and teach and reach out so that this moment could be possible.
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