DISQUS

Hungry Blues: Barack Obama for the Generations

  • karma_musings · 1 year ago
    Great post, Ben. I've been thinking I'd love to interview people I see or run into on a regular basis about what this amazing victory means/would have meant to their parents, grandparents, and other relatives who may have lived through what we now call the "Civil Rights Era" or even earlier. It would be a really moving book.

    Thanks!
  • Rebecca · 12 months ago
    Great post, Ben!
  • Marcia Hamilton · 10 months ago
    And now I have found this! One of the last things William said to me when I asked what would happen now to the civil rights movement, when Nixon got elected in 68, and he said, "we'll go underground for 20 years...." Well, it's 40 and Obama is our president and part of the reason is all the beatings William took in the front lines of those marches. What a smart, kind man he was.
    Marcia Hamilton
    Do you have a picture of him?
  • dfillingham · 9 months ago
    This is very emotional for me too Ben. I was eleven when the washington march in 1963 happened, and my parents took me to it. I was captivated by him, and I remember my parents were jumping up and down. We felt safe with the black people, and felt afraid of the strange white people there, who I later learned were ordinary people who cared about racism.

    Our neighbor susan comes from a racist family in Georgia, and has worked on racism all her life. She is one of some friends coming to our house for an Obama celebration Sunday.

    I hope you find the killers you are looking for. I wish my parents were around now to meet you.