Who can forget the spring of '70. Bombs had exploded at Cal and one went off in SF, killing a cop. Soon afterwards, three Weathermen (including Bill Ayers’ paramour, Diana Oughten) blew themselves up in a "bomb factory” in New York.

After the Cambodian invasion the Ohio National Guard was called on to the Kent State Campus. Four children were shot dead and nine wounded.

1969 had been worse. Hatred was the order of the day. Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were shot and killed by Chicago Police. James Rector was killed right above me on Telegraph during the Peoples' Park riots. Ted Kennedy pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident which cost the life of Mary Jo Kopechne.

A year before, Bobby had been assassinated in L.A. Two months earlier, Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis. American cities burned. The Mai Lai massacre occurred. Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia.

(And folks think these are divisive times in America).

Those were heady days at Cal. It was one thing to play “revolutionary” and march down the streets shouting "On Strike. Shut it down"--and quite another to pick up a gun or go underground and make like Che. (Little did we know what a phony revolutionary he was).

Fortunately, for those who wanted to change the world, but couldn't hop aboard the hate trolley, there was the Civil Rights Movement.

Dr. Martin Luther King had preached peaceful non-violence as the solution to righting the nation's wrongs.

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence…..The foundation of such a method is love.”

In our day, dating a black chick was a big thing. Today it is nothing. We’re slowly defeating prejudice and bigotry. Our kids don’t get the “race thing” at all.
Some prejudice still exists, so symbols still count. I’m not an Obama guy, but I too had tears in my eyes as I watched a black man and woman enter the White house, only 55 years after 9 old white guys said “Separate but Equal was inherently unequal.” What a message America sent to the world.

Affirmative action once served us well, but is now an insult.
I think Justice Sotomayor got the Ricci v. Stefano (the firehouse guys) completely wrong. I don’t agree that “… a wise Latina woman would reach a better conclusion than a white male.” But how cool is it that through merit, a woman of Puerto Rican descent can sit on the highest bench in the land?

From Jackie Robinson to Justice Brandeise getting the “first Jewish Seat,” to Geraldine Ferraro being the first woman V.P. candidate, to the first Irish Police Captain, (back in the day when ads read “Irish need not apply”)—symbolism has given an identity and hope to the disenfranchised.

What was The Civil Rights Movement all about?

To those of us who went South of the Mason Dixon line, and taught reading in black schools to speed integration, it was a defining moment. We carry our Civil Rights Cards with us today. Race is never “off the table.”

We’re closer to blind society than ever before, but we ain’t there yet. We’ll get there,however—if we continue to play our cards right.

In August 1963 Dr. King told us:

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood...I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every Hamlet, from every State and every City, we will speed up that day when all God's children, black men and White man, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will all be able to join hands and sing in the words of Negro spiritual, Free at last! Free at last! Thank god all mighty we are free at last."

Take a day off to honor the man who dared to dream? How could we do otherwise? It is as applicable here today in St. Helena, as it was when he uttered it, oh so many memories ago.

We break for Giants.