Change

When I was a little girl, maybe five or six, growing up in the late seventies/early eighties, Glasgow had the distinction and progressive privilege of electing and maintaining the third African-American mayor in American, Luska Twyman---post Reconstruction. (It's true. You can google it.) He was apparently a good mayor. He was elected in 1968, the same year the Glasgow Scotties won the state basketball tournament. (Coincidence? I truly believe sports opens minds, hearts, barriers.) Mayor Twyman held office until he resigned when I was in middle school and the band director took over, wearing kilts and playing the bagpipe.
Anyway, although the vast majority of the populace was obviously happy with the choice--they kept electing him--a scary few chose to voice their displeasure through protest. Members of the Ku Klux Klan would fairly regularly stand in the intersection in front of McDonalds distributing hate-filled pamphlets of propaganda as people stopped at the red light. I was terrified of their cone heads and white robes. Despite my parents' consoling words that they were not interested in a little girl with blond curls, I would hide in the floorboard of the station wagon until we passed through, windows safely rolled up. Interestingly, my mother told me that one Klan member sadly had a birth defect requiring him to wear a corrective boot. In a town of 15,000, this is a fairly distinguishing mark. (Dude, hiding behind your bedsheets won't disguise you. Everybody knows it's you.) I guess Klan members aren't known for their intelligence.
The point of my post is that I don't feel that old. I think that, despite any of our political views, it's remarkable that, just a few years later, an African-American man has been elected to the highest office in the land. No, he didn't carry Barren County, Kentucky. But minds have been changed along the way in our country. I attended sixth grade in a school that forcibly, legally housed African-American students--the parents of my friends. We've come a very, very long way.
As an aside, when I arrived at school on Wednesday, a first-grader with cognitive disabilities ran to me, threw himself at my legs, and cried, "Miss Reece! Rockobama kills babies!" I assured him that this was not true. He told me that his mother had given him this information. Apparently, according to this little guy, "Rockobama" also "steals things." Please, I beg of you, when discussing abortion and the redistribution of wealth in front of your children, do not use figurative speech. They will discuss it at school. Someone like me will make fun of you. Mercilessly.
I don't think I'm a very big fan of the redistribution of wealth. Maybe, instead, Barack and his friends should consider a bill criminalizing participation in hate groups and militias. I know, they won't. They shouldn't. (There's freedom of speech, that pesky abuse of power, plus it could go way too far and I like my memberships in Chi Omega, Junior League, and the Younger Womens' Club.) But, wouldn't it be really funny if he did?