August 28, 2013

Today I have been a PA resident for 16 years. On this day in 1997, my parents moved me up to Messiah College. (Mom says I was ready to move out at 9yo.)
That means I've now lived in PA longer than I did in MD.

(MD beat out MI for duration back in April 1983, and PA beat MI in April 1999.)

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I know this date has far greater historic importance as the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream speech from the 1963 March on Washington.



I am glad to have grown up in a time of integration and in a place where all colors and creeds lived in neighborhoods together.  One time, possibly in context of Remember the Titans, I asked mom what she remembered of school integration and her first thought was of busing, that students couldn't go to their neighborhood schools because they were districted elsewhere to accomplish the numerics of integration.

But what I remember was that when I was little, maybe 6yo, in the 1980's, my mom got a telemarketer's call inquiring, "Mrs Yee, how would you feel if your children went to school with African-Americans?"

Well, 1) We did. Our next door neighbors on both sides were white and two doors down on both sides were African-American. And 2) Why would you ask this of Mrs YEE? Yeah, we're all white together here?

Is there a ways to go (grow)?  Yes, always.  We're not where we will be.  But, thanks be to God, we're not where we once were, either.

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Sleep.
Sleep tonight.
And may your dreams be realized.

M.L.K. by U2, performed by the Kings Singers.