In the present, looking at the past, peering into the future

It was an interesting Sunday evening that consisted of Charla's world famous breakfast casserole for dinner, lively conversation, and "The Great Debaters."

We watched the movie as the evening light faded, a good thing because it allowed all of us to hide our emotions at the intense moments of the movie, and there were several. For me the first was when the young woman from Wiley College spoke passionately to the audience about integration, that the time "is always now," out in the middle of of the pasture with the church's tent shielding the listeners from the sun. The second one was the lynching scene. Too unspeakable to attempt to describe. The third was young Farmers' presentation in the hall on the Harvard Campus.

We laughed at lot because one of our number has numerous friends and acquaintances who were extras in the movie, and her college band played in the sound track of the movie.

For all of us, it was a riveting look back at Jim Crow, lynchings, racism, and people of immense courage. The prof who was a teacher and coach by day and an activist for the Southern Tenants Farmers Union by night, risking life and limb for a cause. The students who slowly grabbed hold of the idea that they could and should stand up, speak up, and shout out words of freedom and liberation before audiences large and small.

For me, it was a retrospective into the things I've been reading and studying, teaching, and writing about over the last few years.

For me also was the realization that three of the next generation of activists were sitting in our living room......

Now that stirs me deeply, more deeply than I have words to express.