The Hammond Report

In the Missoulian today.

Nomination a big step forward

Tell Billie Holiday. Tell Lester Young. Tell Malcolm and Martin. Tell Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman. Tell Richard Wright and Zora Neale. Tell Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis. Tell the Scottsboro Nine. Tell Emmet Till and his mother, Mamie. Tell the residents of the Ninth Ward. Tell Ms. Parks. Tell them Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

Whatever your party, however you vote, consider what this means about our country. How this new leadership reflects our deepest strength as a nation: that of possibility, of change, of improvement. That we can fix the things most broken in ourselves and in our society. That our diversity is our blessing and our strength. That we are moving, however often it seems that we are not, towards a time when racism will survive as a museum display and museum-goers will wonder how it was ever possible to treat people so poorly.

Start the story in 1621, when Anthony and Isabel arrived in Jamestown; the first couple to survive the Middle Passage, to be re-named, to labor and be sold. If you can, find a cotton field and lean over at an exhausting angle and pry open the sharp hull and tear out the coarse, sticky cotton ball inside. Do it once. Do it twice. Do it every day for the rest of your life. Remind all those who still feel disenfranchised that content of character really does matter more than anything else. Look good, look sharp, look up. The content of everyone's character matters now.

So tell Lady Day, tell Prez. In America in 2008, an honorable man is running for president. And his wife, Michelle, will be a great first lady.

Shannon Reilley, St. Ignatius