My father marched in Selma. He was a corn-fed white boy from the mid-west, raised in the church and has lived a life of violently peaceful resistance to ignorance. He wasn't in DC on the day that MLK proclaimed his dream to a nation on the cusp of forcing racial equality gently down the throats of those who would choose to live in the past; a past fraught with injustice and ignorance and blind hatred.
He may not have been there, but he has lived that dream. He and my mother settled in a neighborhood where all the ethnic Europeans had or were on their way out as blacks moved in. A lot of people thought he was crazy. A lot of people still think is his. My sister and I were born and raised in the loving cradle of what was a poor and otherwise un-cared for neighborhood. Our childhood friends and playmates were black and Latino. Our parents sat around their kitchen table having a beer or Manhattan with some of the kindest men I've ever met – all who happened to be black. I was infatuated with their stories. And to this day, when I go back to that neighborhood I am always struck by the feeling that who you are is how you are made.
My father is highly educated. He has a vehement sense of right versus wrong. He instilled it in us, his children, and to those to whom he has ministered all of his life. He left the church in the early years but has and always will be a preacher’s son. Proud doesn't begin to describe how I feel about being his son: To be a product of something that he felt was the right thing to do regardless of how others might feel about his choices.
Someone once asked me what I thought was the most influential moment in the last 50 years of American history. I replied that it was Sirhan Sirhan’s murder of RFK: it was too much loss for country to bear and ended a philosophical dynasty that – even with its faults – was driving our country towards a place that we should have gotten to 30 years ago. If they’d asked me what the most influential moment of my life was it would have to be the moment my father and mother bought their house on Townsend Street. And stayed.
He may not have been there, but he has lived that dream. He and my mother settled in a neighborhood where all the ethnic Europeans had or were on their way out as blacks moved in. A lot of people thought he was crazy. A lot of people still think is his. My sister and I were born and raised in the loving cradle of what was a poor and otherwise un-cared for neighborhood. Our childhood friends and playmates were black and Latino. Our parents sat around their kitchen table having a beer or Manhattan with some of the kindest men I've ever met – all who happened to be black. I was infatuated with their stories. And to this day, when I go back to that neighborhood I am always struck by the feeling that who you are is how you are made.
My father is highly educated. He has a vehement sense of right versus wrong. He instilled it in us, his children, and to those to whom he has ministered all of his life. He left the church in the early years but has and always will be a preacher’s son. Proud doesn't begin to describe how I feel about being his son: To be a product of something that he felt was the right thing to do regardless of how others might feel about his choices.
Someone once asked me what I thought was the most influential moment in the last 50 years of American history. I replied that it was Sirhan Sirhan’s murder of RFK: it was too much loss for country to bear and ended a philosophical dynasty that – even with its faults – was driving our country towards a place that we should have gotten to 30 years ago. If they’d asked me what the most influential moment of my life was it would have to be the moment my father and mother bought their house on Townsend Street. And stayed.