The Power of Martyrdom

When Dylann Roof walked into the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina he had no idea that what he was about to do would result in the demonization of the symbols of the Confederacy that he held so dear. Not in his wildest dreams did he think that his actions alone would create a national conversation that would eventually remove the confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds in Columbia, South Carolina and Montgomery, Alabama, the license plates of Virginia, Texas, Alabama, and Georgia, as well as remove the emblem from the state flag of Mississippi. I am sure he had no idea that within days, anything with the battle flag on it would be impossible to buy at Wal-Mart, Sears, Amazon, Target, or E-Bay. I am sure that he had no idea that with his singular, incredibly evil act he would do more to illuminate the true purpose of the Civil War than all of America’s schools have been able to do. Surely, he had no idea that he would bring all of God’s children, Blacks and whites, Jews and Gentiles, Protestant and Catholic, Democrat and Republican, together to a table of brotherhood and mutual respect.

Rev. Clementa Pinckney, State Senator. Ms. Cynthia Hurd, Librarian. Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Speech Therapist and Girl’s track coach. Mr. Tywanza Sanders, recent graduate of Allen University. Ms. Ethel Lance, seventy-year-old member of Emanuel AME, served as church sexton for more than 30 years. Ms. Susie Jackson, 87-year-old member of Emanuel AME, choir member and usher. Ms. DePayne Middleton Doctor, retired Charleston County Director of the Community Development Block Grant Program. Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr. 74-year-old retired pastor, member of Emanuel AME ministerial staff. Ms. Myra Thompson, 59-year-old wife of a local minister. They are all dead. They were murdered on Wednesday night while attending bible study at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. They have become martyrs, known all over the world.

On June 23, 1963, fifty-two years ago yesterday, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made a speech in Detroit, Michigan in which he said, “A man who hasn’t found something he is willing to die for is not fit to live”. Later that year, Dr. King would deliver the eulogy for three of the four little girls that died when another church was desecrated by the act of those poisoned by racism. The 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed on a Sunday morning by the ku klux klan. The deaths were an awakening for white America. “Conservative” politicians declined to defend the indefensible, and in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the laws that mandated racial segregation and discrimination came to an end.

In 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Rev. James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo gave the “last full measure of devotion”. The march from Selma to Montgomery was sanctioned and protected by the federal government, and the Voting Rights Act was passed. As a result, one hundred years after its passage in the aftermath of the Civil War, the promise of the 14^th and 15^th amendments would be fulfilled, Blacks would finally be allowed to vote, and true citizenship for African Americans would at last become an American reality.

Dr. King himself would pay the price in 1968. His martyrdom would silence his many critics, and secure his place as an American hero. He would take his place beside Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin Roosevelt on the National Mall. His birthday would become a national holiday, and his legacy would continue to advance the cause of freedom and equality all over the world thru the present day.

The power of symbolism cannot be underestimated. The Nazi’s recognized this power, and the swastika and what it means was and remains unmistakable to this day. The Stars and Stripes of the United States is a beacon of hope and symbol of freedom all over the world. The Cross is the universal symbol of Christianity. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is the essence of Christianity, and the martyrdom of Christ and its effect on the world is unequaled.

It is very likely that the nine people that died at Emanuel AME Church had no desire to be martyrs. Like most of us they wanted to live, and enjoy their lives as long as possible. But I am confident that all of them, if they knew that that day, would be their last day, would hope that their living, their lives, would not be in vain. I am sure that if they knew that their blood would be sacrificed on the floor of their place of worship, they would want something good to come from it. As natives of the South, it is unlikely they would have imagined the response from the people of Charleston, America, and the world.

Something momentous is happening in the old Confederacy. Eyes have been opened, hearts have been touched, and minds have been changed. The racists are embarrassed and searching for excuses and reasons for being. Love, respect, understanding, and brotherhood is winning. The blood sacrifice of Mother Emanuel is generating mass empathy all over the South.

“A man who hasn’t found something worth dying for, isn’t fit to live”. Dr. King’s statement is one that all of us should take some time to think about.    

Freddie's Dead

In the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, I would watch the television coverage anxiously. During the days when the city was under the curfew that had been imposed by the mayor, and was being enforced by legions of imported police officers, including the Maryland National Guard, I would grow more and more nervous as the hour for everyone to be off the streets approached. Each night I would silently pray that the citizens of the city would go home. I silently cursed the hundreds of reporters, camera men, and photographers that seemed to outnumber the citizens on the streets. It seemed as if they were hoping for something to go wrong, something sensational to photograph and report. Some seemed disappointed when it didn’t happen. I have no doubt that their ubiquitous presence was an irresistible temptation for those that were the last to leave the streets each night. The desire for even momentary fame is almost a universal desire for many young Americans. We are drawn to television lights like moths to a flame.

I was one of the many that breathed a sigh of relief when the police officers involved in Mr. Gray’s death were charged with various crimes related to his death. I have no doubt that the charges contributed to the détente in the streets. I am willing to accept the results of their trials. If the citizens of Baltimore that sit as their jurors find one, some, or all of them innocent, so be it. But they had to be charged.

 I never thought about what the police might do in response to those charges.

According to the Washington Post, USA Today, ABC News, The Guardian, and several other news outlets, May was the bloodiest month in Baltimore since December of 1971. The city had 43 homicides in May, 2015. In December, 1971 it had 44. In 1971 the city had 900,000 residents. Today it has 600,000 residents, (a third less). Since January of this year there have been 116 homicides. Most of the killings have occurred in the same west Baltimore area that was the epicenter of the recent riots.

One Baltimore police officer was recently interviewed on Fox News with his face and voice disguised. According to him, the citizens in west Baltimore wanted less of a police presence, and “that’s exactly what they are getting”. According to him, the police are acting in unison because they are angry about the charges against the six officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray. The facts support what the officer said. A Baltimore TV station, WBAL, reported that there has been a 32% drop in arrests since the curfew, and the homicide rate is up 40% over last year. Apparently, their duty to “protect and serve” only applies if they are not to be accountable for breaking the law themselves.

The most violent month in the history of Baltimore occurred in August, 1972, when the city suffered from 45 homicides.  That same year, Curtis Mayfield released the soundtrack for the movie “SuperFly”. One of the songs from the album was called “Freddie’s Dead”. The lyrics included the following;

“Why can’t we brothers, protect one another?

No one serious, and it makes me furious

Don’t be misled, just think of Fred,

Cause Freddie’s dead”

The psychological, sociological, and economical reasons that young Black men are conducting this intractable war against themselves is debatable. But a “War” is exactly what it is. The casualty rate is unacceptable. The collateral damage is affecting the women and children that live in the war zones all over America. For the moment, the national media hordes have left to seek out more sensational opportunities to increase their ratings.

 Fortunately,??? recent events have inspired certain media outlets to at least count the casualties.

The challenges facing the leaders of Baltimore are similar to those facing the leaders of Chicago, Birmingham, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and many other cities. The lack of national media coverage does not mean that the urgency is less. People are still dying, violently, needlessly, every day. Women are still being widowed, children are losing parents, mothers and fathers are grieving. Something must be done. The status quo is not sustainable. There is nothing more important than stopping this daily, violent loss of life. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is present not only among the veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is also present among the men, women, and children that live in America’s urban war zones.

Curtis Mayfield was right. In Baltimore, the police peacekeepers have withdrawn from the battlefield. It’s going to be up to the brothers to protect one another.

The Rise and Fall of The Common Core

I was on a plane, cruising at 35,000 feet. There were several Principals on the flight. We were returning to the east coast from the annual NASSP (National Association of Secondary School Principals) convention when the conversation turned to NCLB (No Child Left Behind) and how our students were doing on our State’s annual exams. I was talking to a Principal from Mississippi, and when I asked him how his kids were doing I was left speechless by his response. According to him, his students were passing his State exams at a rate of more than 90%. That is when I knew that something was really wrong with American education in general, and NCLB in particular.

It is both logical and sensible to evaluate how well students have mastered the material that they are being taught. It is righteous and illuminating to disaggregate the data from those evaluations by racial groups, economic status, and the learning disabled as well. It is also important to have short term and long term goals for student achievement. Consequences for failure and/or non-compliance are necessary too, because all educators know that rules and expectations without consequences are not rules or consequences at all. All of these things were a part of NCLB, and all of these things are good.

However, NCLB had a fatal, obvious flaw. Bowing to “States Rights”, the law allowed the states to devise their own tests, set their own standards, and by so doing, devise their own definition of success. The result, was 50 different sets of standards. A successful student in Mississippi could move to Maryland and find him or herself hopelessly behind. A successful school in Louisiana might be a failing school in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, business leaders were complaining that high school graduates did not have the skills to do the work that their companies needed their employees to do. State superintendents of education, corporate leaders and Governors were looking at results from the NAEP, (National Assessment of Educational Progress) which is considered by many to be the “nation’s report card”. The NAEP asks the same questions and is administered in the same way in every state. It allows you to compare one state to another, one state to the nation at large, and the pace of improvement for a particular state and the nation. It was obvious to these state-level policy-makers that the country needed to have the same educational goals, the same standards. Not necessarily the same curriculums, not the same tactics or strategies, but as in football, the field needs to be 100 yards for everybody, or in basketball, the goal has to be ten feet from the floor for all. The nation needed common standards, not for every subject, just the core subjects of English and Math, Common Core Standards. The overall rationale was not only educational, but economic as well.

By 2010, forty-four of the fifty states had agreed to adopt and implement the Common Core Standards. The only states that refused to participate were Oklahoma, Indiana, Texas, Virginia, Alaska, and Nebraska. The standards had been conceived and developed by the states themselves. The effort was funded by the states, with additional funding provided by the private sector, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Somehow, between 2010 and today, this remarkable cooperation and near consensus among the states and corporate America to do the right thing for the education of America’s children began to fall apart.

 The genesis of the politicization of the Common Core occurred in July 2009, when the Obama administration announced a competition among the states to receive “Race to The Top” funding. As an incentive for states to initiate educational reform, States were awarded additional competitive points to adopt “internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the work place”. This additional educational funding for cash-strapped states became a powerful incentive to adopt the Common Core Standards.

As a result, the Common Core Standards became “President Obama’s program”. Republican Governors such as Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina began to back away from the program. National think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation criticized it as well. Conservative talk radio hosts weighed in, as well as Fox News. It has been described as a “federal top-down takeover of state and local education systems”.

The persistent attacks from the political right have been effective. By the end of 2014, four states had repealed the legislation that adopted the Common Core Standards. Seventeen additional states had introduced legislation to repeal or delay implementation.

Hatred is debilitating. It affects our ability to think and act rationally. We are all given reasons to hate others. When we submit to the temptation, we do more damage to ourselves than we do to those we allow ourselves to hate. I will not go into the reasons they feel the way they do, but the hatred that so many conservatives have for President Obama is sad to see. It is an intense, blinding, hatred that is debilitating not only to them but to the nation as well. It is a hatred that is debilitating to the nation’s uninsured. It is a hatred that is debilitating to the nation’s economy. It is a hatred that is debilitating to the nation’s children, for what is more important than their education?

I have never known anyone that I disagreed with on everything. I have never known anyone that I wanted to destroy at all costs, by any means necessary.

I pray to God, that I never do.

A Choice of Colors

Baltimore exploded last night. It began with the young people, high school students, urging each other, encouraging each other, to meet at the mall after school to express their anger and frustration at the death of another Black man at the hands of police. The message, spread by social messaging, spread quickly, setting the stage not only for many students to respond, but also for the police to be in place, and the media to be there to record it all.

The family of Freddie Gray, the young man that lost his life at the hands of the police, had eloquently expressed their desire that no protests be held on the day of the funeral, but their wishes would be ignored. The mayor of the city, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had repeatedly assured the residents of the city that the death was being investigated, and that those responsible for any wrongdoing would be held accountable. She too, was ignored.

Before the evening was done, rioters had attacked police with bottles and rocks, a pharmacy, mall and other businesses had been looted, police cars had been burned, at least two large fires had occurred, and almost twenty police officers had been injured. Media reports indicate that more than 200 rioters were arrested. The mayor has declared a curfew. The schools are closed. The Baltimore Orioles have cancelled their games, and the Governor has called out the National Guard to maintain order in this beautiful city less than 50 miles from the nation’s capital.

All of this occurred in West Baltimore, one of the poorest neighborhoods you will find in the United States.

For Black America, this is another “Tale of Two Cities”, a reincarnation of “the best of times, and the worst of times”. Never before, has a Black person in the United States had the opportunities for educational, professional, political, and economic success that exists today. On the other hand, the illiteracy, imprisonment, unemployment, frustration, hopelessness and anger that exists for large segments of the Black community is as bad as it has been for any ethnic group in the history of our country.

It would be impossible to find a single person that was participating in the destruction of West Baltimore last night that had a college or technical degree, a household income of $40,000, a steady job, a car and a mortgage.

During the Great Depression, the unemployment rate for all Americans got as high as 24.9%. In 1939, it was still at 17.2%. Today, the unemployment rate for African-Americans in Wisconsin is 19.9%. In Nevada, Michigan, Iowa, and the District of Columbia, it’s more than 15%. In Illinois, Missouri, and Washington, the unemployment rate sits at 14%. In California, Connecticut, Indiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota, Colorado, Rhode Island, and Tennessee, the unemployment rate for African Americans exceed 10%. Nationwide the unemployment rate for African Americans is 11.4%, twice as high as the rate for whites.

For Black America, the Great Depression continues.

Despite the relative prosperity of the technical and college educated, corporate, entrepreneur, home owning Blacks of America’s cities and suburbs, there still exists neighborhoods of crushing poverty and hopelessness in the rural enclaves and inner cities of America. This is where the inferior schools are found. This is where the missing men are in prison or dead as a result of the continuing wars between themselves. This is where the fear and loathing exists between police and the communities they are sworn to protect and defend. This is where a culture of mediocrity has been embraced, and the uniquely human need for dignity manifests itself in ways that result in the events that occurred in Baltimore, Maryland last night.

It was the spring of 1971 at Benjamin Russell High School in Alexander City, Alabama. The senior class was gathered in the auditorium for its last class meeting. The purpose of the meeting included deciding on class officers, a class song, a class flower, class colors, and a class motto. The great experiment had begun four years earlier, in 1967. George Wallace’s pledge of “segregation forever” had evaporated. The fears of the apocalypse had failed to materialize. The children of this small rural Alabama town, Black and white, had integrated the school, and was about to graduate.

We had come to know each other during four of the most tumultuous years of the 20^th century. We had witnessed war, assassinations, and riots. We had learned not to fear each other, to respect each other. Some of us had become friends.

As I sat in the auditorium I started to think of the great Curtis Mayfield. He was one of my favorite musical artists, not just for his music, but also because of the power and beauty of his lyrics. Many of his songs were focused on equality and civil rights, and the words of those songs were as important to me as any textbook I read. As I was thinking of him, someone asked for a nomination for a class motto. Instinctively, I got up and said “I’ve got one”. I walked to the stage and stood before my classmates, all 220 of them. Two hundred whites, and just 20 Blacks. I was thinking of the words from a Curtis Mayfield song called “A Choice of Colors”. I said…

“People Must Prove to the People, That a Better Day is Coming, For You and For Me. With Just a Little Bit More Education, and Love For Our Nation, We’ll Make a Better Society”.

There were no other nominations. Our class approved my suggestion unanimously. I like to think that we were true to our motto, that our society today is a better one than the one we had in 1971.

However, watching the chaos in Baltimore last night made me wonder.

The Making of a Principal

It is always constructive to start a conversation by finding common ground, something that the participants agree on. Let’s start with this. In K-12 education, Principals are really important. It would be very hard to find a successful school, public or private with an incompetent Principal.

Unfortunately, a large majority of Principals are woefully unprepared for the requirements of the job. Now, in order to make a statement like that, one has to be intimately aware of what those requirements are. It would help if they have experienced the demands, expectations, stresses, and day to day occurrences first hand.

I have.

Most of the people that criticize the nation’s schools have legitimate concerns. They are correct to demand improvement. They are correct to demand equality in funding, better teachers, and better student outcomes.

What they may not realize is the most direct, cost-efficient way of obtaining those results is by focusing on the proper training and selection of the Principals. Once those Principals are selected, it is very important that they are given the autonomy and authority to pursue the desired results. They should be highly rewarded for success, and held accountable for failure.

Most of today’s Principals were outstanding teachers. Unfortunately, the skill set required to be an outstanding teacher is woefully inadequate preparation for being a Principal. My experience as a teacher lasted only five years. Fortunately, I had other professional experiences before becoming a teacher that turned out to be perfect training for my years as a Principal.

My career began as an Administration Manager for the International Business Machines Corporation. IBM gave me excellent management training and experiences that I relied on extensively as a Principal. After thirteen years with IBM my expertise included inventory management, personnel management, accounts payable, budgets, contract administration, distributive leadership, facility management, public speaking, motivational strategies, performance planning, counseling, and evaluation. All of these things were essential skills that contributed to my success as a Principal. None of them were taught to me in the undergraduate or graduate schools of education that I attended.

My pre-Principal education did not end there. I left IBM to purchase a franchised business, and became acutely aware of the pressures of being the final decision-maker. Five years as a business owner and I became completely sensitive to the importance of payrolls, and the enormous effect that meeting it and getting it right has on employee loyalty and morale. The importance of bank accounts, balances, and general ledgers became clear. I also came to appreciate how critical relationships with the community and other businesses were to my ultimate success. Perhaps just as importantly, I learned what it was like to be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the focus and stamina that requires, and the unending pressure of being ultimately responsible for everything. You don’t learn that as a teacher.

Five years as a teacher completed the preparation for me. Every successful Principal has to be expert in pedagogy, or the methods and practice of teaching. Additionally, a good teacher is aware of the importance of, and practices successful group dynamics, classroom management, parent relations, and educational ethics. Of course, education is ultimately about relationships, and the great teachers, the ones that become Principals excel at building and nurturing positive relationships with all of their stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, administrators, and members of the community.

The nine years that I spent as a high school Principal were highly successful by any measure. Test Scores? We improved our State Assessment scores in English by 253%, and our Algebra scores by 395%. Increased rigor? We increased the number of students taking Advanced Placement classes from 30 to 700. College and Career Readiness? For five consecutive years, 90% of seniors applied to four-year colleges, with a 70% acceptance rate. We were approved as an International Baccalaureate school. We were featured in a Harvard Business School case study, Forbes Magazine, and several times in the Washington Post. We were featured on both sides of the political spectrum, including the Center for American Progress and the Heritage Foundation. Deloitte named us “School of the Year” in the National Capitol Region in 2010-2011. The US Department of Education featured us on its “Doing What Works” web site. We opened a student-run branch of a local credit union on campus, and our students built a broadcast studio on campus as well. We convinced the State Senate to fund a press box for our football field, and persuaded the county government and board of education to fund and build a new auditorium for the school. We received three formal citations for excellence from the Maryland General Assembly, and two more from the Governor of the State. We also received a commendation from the County Government.

We also received an invitation for 50 of our teachers and students to visit the White House from Michelle Obama.

All of this occurred at a high school on the outskirts of Washington DC in which more than 65% of the students received free and/or reduced meals, the majority lived in single parent homes, a school in which many in the community had lost all hope.

I know that the immediate response to this will be “can this be duplicated”? My response is “I don’t know”. What I do know is that it is possible to re-think how Principals are trained and selected. I know that if I had taken only what I learned in school and as a teacher into my job as a Principal I would not have been as successful as I was. As a Principal, I needed every bit of the training and expertise I accumulated as a manager at one of the world’s great corporations and as an entrepreneur.

 More importantly, I had to insist on the authority and autonomy the job demands. I needed the courage to be different.

Every new Principal would benefit from receiving management training at one of America’s successful businesses. Our schools are living, breathing organisms, communities that a Principal is responsible for organizing, nurturing, educating and disciplining. Let’s invest in and then have the courage to trust our school’s leaders.

Capital Punishment

I am against the death penalty. My reasons include the fact that sometimes it is applied arbitrarily. Sometimes it is applied without due process. Sometimes it is applied due to racial bias.

I realize that many people disagree with me on this, and I respect that. My best friend and I have had some of our most passionate arguments over the death penalty. We have agreed to disagree.

One week ago today, Walter Scott, a fifty year old Black man was summarily executed in North Charleston, South Carolina. His obvious crime was failing to cooperate with a police officer. He was shot in the back eight times. He was unarmed. The executioner was Michael Slager, a police officer.

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year old Black man was executed in Ferguson, Missouri. His crime was allegedly shop-lifting and walking in the middle of the street. Twelve shots were fired at Brown. He was unarmed. The executioner was Darren Wilson, a police officer.

On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner, a 43-year old Black man was executed in Staten Island, New York City. His crime was selling cigarettes without a license. He was choked to death. He was unarmed. The executioner was Daniel Pantaleo, a police officer.

In the case of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, local authorities were not forthcoming with information about what happened and what was being done about it. The result was public anger, large-scale protests and demonstrations, and in the case of Brown, additional violence. Tensions were exacerbated when grand juries refused to indict the executioners.

In the case of Walter Scott, the authorities in South Carolina are to be commended for doing the right thing, and doing it quickly. The executioner was arrested, put in jail, and charged with murder. There will be a public trial. A jury composed of the citizens of North Charleston will decide on Michael Slager’s guilt or innocence. That is as it should be, in the United States of America. As a result, there were no widespread protests or subsequent violence in North Charleston. That is all that people anywhere really want, justice for all.

The sad reality is that the vast majority of death penalty victims in the United States are Black men summarily executed on the streets of the United States without any due process of law. No lawyer, no trial, no jury, and no chance for any last minute confession or penance.

For those that do make it to court, the results are grim and unquestionably racially biased.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973, 152 people that were on death row waiting to die have been exonerated and released. Of those exonerated and released, 79 (52%) were Black.

 Since 1976, 76% of the victims in death penalty cases were white. Only 15% of the victims were Black.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a pacifist. If someone tried to harm my family I would defend my family to the death. But, for the crime of murder, I believe that a long life in prison, in solitary confinement, with hard labor whenever you did see the sun, is more of a punishment than death. Many religions (including my own) teaches that forgiveness is available to all. What happens to the mass murderer that confesses his sins on death row, has a religious conversion, and is then killed? Will he go to heaven?

Death is an end, inevitable and as egalitarian as anything in life. It is not a punishment. The tragedy of the premature, unnecessary death is undeniably real and can bring about incredible grief for family and friends. But we find comfort and solace in our religious beliefs, confident that there is “a better place”. Why would we think that sending a murderer to that “better place” sooner than later is punishment?

Who would bear the responsibility if the 152 people that would have died at the behest of the government since 1973 had not been cleared of their alleged crime?

Who bears responsibility for those that were innocent but were not cleared and died anyway?

We have a responsibility, as individuals, and as a society to protect our lives, property, and institutions from those that would damage or destroy them. To remove those individuals from the society is just, and allows us to correct the human errors that we will surely make.

To kill them is barbaric, uncivilized, and non-correctable.

It doesn’t matter if you are in the courtroom, or on the streets of North Charleston, New York, or Ferguson.

Apocalypse Now?

The date was January 14, 1963. Fifty two years ago. The streets of Montgomery were packed with visitors from all over the state. Many others were there from other states. The local, state, and national media were there as well. The occasion was the inaugural address of the newly elected governor. The speech had been written by Asa Carter, founder of the local Ku Klux Klan. The editors of the local daily newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, had urged the fiery young governor-elect to remove the fateful passage from the speech, but their request was denied. He stood on the portico of the Capitol building, looking down on the mass of people stretching down the boulevard known as Dexter Avenue. Surely, he was aware of the symbolism. This was the same place that Jefferson Davis had stood as he was sworn in as the first (and only) President of the Confederacy.

And then, he said it.

“Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us have done, time and again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny….and I say….Segregation today….Segregation tomorrow….Segregation forever!”

Five years later, the man that said these words would run for President as an Independent. He would carry 5 states, including Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama. He would garner 46 Electoral votes, 13.5% of the total vote, and 9.9 Million votes. In other words, he was not alone in his sentiments or his vision for the future of America.

It would be foolish to think that this point of view on diversity, that was so demonstrably prevalent 50 years ago no longer exists.

Xenophobia, homophobia, and racism are all fueled by fear. So what are so many people in America afraid of? Why the intolerance? Why so many voter suppression efforts? Why so many reactionary laws targeting the LGBT community? Why so much animosity toward immigration reform efforts?

According to the US Census Bureau, the percentage of the American population classified as white was 75.1% in 2000. In 2010 it had decreased to 63.7%. At the current rate, it is estimated that in less than thirty years America will no longer be a country where white people are in the majority. In 2005, only 28% of the American public supported same-sex marriage. Today, more than 50% of the public supports it, thirty seven states have legalized it, and a conservative Supreme Court seems primed to make it the law of the land.

America is changing. Rapidly. And “Change”, is scary.

The number of Americans that are 65 years or older is larger than it has been at any time in the country’s history. According to the 2010 census, more than 40 million Americans are 65 or older. They make up 13% of the total population. They also make up the base of the Republican Party. They grew up in the sixties. Many of them did not go to integrated schools, do not socialize with minorities, and did not compete against them in the workforce. They are very resistant to the change that is occurring in America today.

The firestorm generated by Indiana’s religious freedom law is the latest example of the conflict between competing views of America’s future, the old and the new, “segregation forever” or “I have a dream”.

The differences are real, deeply ingrained in the fabric of our nation’s culture. They will not go away easily, if ever. It is a cultural divide that was settled, but not forgotten, by civil war. Economic forces have forced the Indiana legislature to reconsider its effort to clothe its bigotry in subtle legislation. The same forces have prompted the governor of Arkansas to reconsider his legislature’s similar effort. Nevertheless, every Republican presidential candidate did not hesitate to weigh in on the side that the Republican base demands. They know that they cannot win a Republican primary without pleasing the base.

I am reminded of the first shots fired at Fort Sumter.

Once, George Wallace was asked why he started using racist messages. He is quoted as having said, “I tried to talk about good roads and good schools, and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about n*****s, and they stomped the floor.”

They stomped the floor. They stomped the steps. They stomped the street and they stomped the grass in Montgomery….On January 14, 1963.

The minorities are coming. Will the older, white Americans allow it to happen? Or will they take America with them, to their graves?