I am an old white man who knows this aint over.

Thirty five years ago I was driving to Arizona from Minnesota with my 6 month old daughter and my wife in my VW bug.  We were taking an interstate to Texas and then prepared to hang a right. We got just outside of Oklahoma City and  my car started experiencing problems. It was overheating but beyond that I cannot say. I looked back and my baby was passed out.

 I saw a pay phone on the hill ahead of us and the bug just made it to that hill. I parked and ran to the phone and an ambulance arrived shortly. I mean shortly.  We were whisked to a medical center in Oklahoma City and these people saved my child.

For some reason I walked back to the car so it could not have been more than a couple of miles from the city. On my way back, walking on the freeway, two or three cars full of youth were whooping and hollering.  I never thought about it.  Shortly a police car stopped and yelled:
"Hey boy. What the hell you doin?  Don't you know this is nigger country?"

I went up to the car and explained what I was doing and they yelled at me again and opened the car door and let me into the back seat and drove me to the hospital.

I had not thought about this in years.  My daughter is in her thirties and doing fine.  I remember that Oklahoma City saved my daughter's life.  I remember that we did not have significant problems getting that car fixed and I know I was grateful for the hospitality of Oklahoma City.

I never forgot those cops and I never forgot that I was witnessing a real war going on in Oklahoma.

Now I practiced law up here in Minnesota for 25 years. People think only Swedes with a smattering of a few Jews live up here.  Untrue.  Regular Black City segregation--de facto, no de jure.  Although the de-jure existed in the County Registrar's office in the form of restrictive covenants that were blacked out--excuse the pun--with magic markers sometime in the mid '50's.

Do you know you can still go down to those offices in counties all over the state and you can read the racism right through the magic markers.  I never thought about it, but somebody in a high place in state government wanted the blocked out provisions in those deeds to remain readable.

At any rate, I was never a particularly gifted attorney and I made my money on SS and PI and so I was always stuck doing some misdemeanor work.  I represented a lot of poor whites, black and Amerindians.
 
I will never forget a white housing inspector I represented  who was fired for cause.  These people were always dirty.  They actually would cite buildings for non compliance and then have their buddy buy the place after it was condemned and fix it up for pennies and make money.  These guys were crooks.

At any rate this inspector was assigned to keep a young journalist occupied and ordered by his county boss to  'show her the town'.  When he got to Franklin Avenue--the single poorest place in Minneapolis, at least the south side--he turned to the young woman and told her welcome to Franklin Avenue, this is where the Indians live.

"  Forgive them, they used to be able to shit all over the place and then move their tepee."

 Direct quote in the city's newspaper and the son-of-a-bitch and a mason who once made the cover of their magazine, was fired.  I know he remained fired but I cannot remember how the matter was decided.

I still am grateful for how Oklahoma City saved my daughter's life. But I never forgot those cops. I remember being surprised because I thought all that shit went on on the other side of the Mississippi.

I know that the senators form Oklahoma, today, are among the worst five or six senators in the country. I follow them a little bit on C-Span.

But I would think that PC would not allow the police to speak like they did 35 years ago. My point of course was that pc would not allow any official in Minnesota to speak like that in public, even in the seventies.
I do know that segregation de facto has not gone away and I do not think the situation has changed that much in 30, 40 or one hundred years. I have driven through L.A., Detroit, Boston, Chicago...
I did not vote for Barack O'Bama as a compromise candidate. I saw him like a Ralph Nader, someone who could never be elected.  Of course, I had to back him.  I wondered what those cops in Oklahoma City thought of this election or even what that Minnesota Mason thought, if they still live.

The President-Elect will stand at an open air podium in about 50 days in front of four or five MILLION  people.  I predict 100 or 150 Million Americans are going to watch this inauguration on TV, on computers, on phones, on radio.....And I predict that a billion people across the world are going to be watching the same live program on their gadgets. In other words, more people might be watching this speech than witnessed the landing of the first man on the moon.

I  cannot believe that this is not going to make a difference. Thank you for your patience.