The Good Fight

September, 1963

My friend Patrick - by virtue of an alphabetized seating chart, we had known each other since the 1st grade - heard the news of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and broke down in angry, futile tears. He was just 15, in his 2nd year of high school and the deaths of four innocent children were more than he could bear. Two months later, in the midst of changing classes, the school loudspeaker announced the assassination of John Kennedy and Patrick was stricken. The following week when school resumed, he was gone. He had raided his college fund, packed a bag, left a note for his parents and boarded a bus for Mississippi. While life went relentlessly on for those of us so easily lulled into mediocrity and apathy, Patrick had found a calling, the will to act on it, and a place to express it. He came of age in a series of small southern towns where a young black boy with an agenda was unwelcome and in constant jeopardy for his life. His northern upbringing and expectations branded him a trouble maker and an outside agitator - he was targeted, threatened, beaten and jailed - but he kept going. He wrote home irregularly but his mother brought each letter to the school where she read it at Friday assemblies, her voice tremulous but proud. We collected money, signed petitions, wrote articles in support for the school paper - then in 1964, three young civil rights workers went missing and the letters from Patrick stopped entirely. Mississippi's hate had spread and infected everyone it touched, even reaching deep into a Massachusetts school and taking its toll on naive, well meaning students and an innocent family. It was an evil, heartbreaking and shameful time.

While those who fought the good fight in Mississippi and Alabama died and disappeared, Boston mourned on one hand and on the other opposed school busing with a vengeance - there were riots and demonstrations and political speeches that blazed with the fires of racism and hatred, just as they do today. I imagine Patrick would not be overly surprised to hear a black president called a terrorist or have his birthright questioned, to see a proposal to repeal civil rights made self righteously and boldly, to see all that he fought against embraced and made mainstream acceptable. He lived in dangerous times and made dangerous choices and it cost him dearly.

For people like Patrick, those who go off to fight for the rights of the few and never return, those willing to sacrifice on a scale that most of us dare not even consider - I hope they find peace and some measure of justice even though the war is still not over. I hope there are enough of us left to make him proud.

We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
Barack Obama

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