Black and White are Not Colors Just Different Forms of Light

Tonight I went to the Moving America Forward rally and heard President and Mrs. Obama speak. It was a great experience to see and hear an American president that has made history like no other.

As a child I witnessed total separation of black and white. Black people entered and ate in separate places in restaurants, had separate schools, churches and stores. Our local diner had a side room with a sliding window that black people could order from and then take it home to eat. I was told by my grandmother that  it was customary for a black person to go to a side or back door if they had to speak with someone at a white person's home. I remember wondering as a child if our black neighbors had their own TV shows, different from white people. I even wondered if their pets were different. My most awful memory was of a cross being burned in front of a house just down the road. It has been in recent days that it came to me that the girl that lived there told us she was "half Indian", so I am suspecting that she was mixed race but I knew nothing of such things as a kid. I was in 5th grade when the schools in our county were integrated. Even though together at the same school, black and white students separated themselves my whole school career. It saddens me when I think of what friendships I may have missed out on because of the culture of my town. So in my mind, in so many ways America has already moved forward.