The cover of the February 2, 2009 issue The Nation, "An Inauguration for the Ages" by John Mavroudis, is a joy: it'll make you cry. You look around (click for a bigger picture) and recognize a few faces - Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, John Brown, Chief Joseph, Gandhi, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, Lyndon Johnson, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Nelson Mandela... Eventually you give up and check the key and find many others, from Susan B. Anthony to Cesar Chavez to Harvey Milk. You almost start the predictable questioning about who's left out... and then you notice the very front row, and find yourself weeping: it's Emmet Till, and four girls. Their names are Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Denise McNair and Addie Mae Collins: the Birmingham Four, who died in a KKK bombing of a Baptist Church in 1963. They'd be in their fifties today, and how proud...
Saturday, January 24, 2009
An inauguration for the ages
The cover of the February 2, 2009 issue The Nation, "An Inauguration for the Ages" by John Mavroudis, is a joy: it'll make you cry. You look around (click for a bigger picture) and recognize a few faces - Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, John Brown, Chief Joseph, Gandhi, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, Lyndon Johnson, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Nelson Mandela... Eventually you give up and check the key and find many others, from Susan B. Anthony to Cesar Chavez to Harvey Milk. You almost start the predictable questioning about who's left out... and then you notice the very front row, and find yourself weeping: it's Emmet Till, and four girls. Their names are Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Denise McNair and Addie Mae Collins: the Birmingham Four, who died in a KKK bombing of a Baptist Church in 1963. They'd be in their fifties today, and how proud...
