citizenship+reflection

William Faulkner once said that the past is not dead: it is not even past. This picture is now fifty years old. It heralded the rising tide of integration as well as the deep hatreds and prejudices that resisted that tide. Fifty years on, we no longer speak of integration, and when we do speak of race, we have obscured our moral conscience as well as our consciousness of the color line, The kind of sacrifice that Elizabeth Eckford made on that September day is emblematic of the new demands of citizenship that we must learn and grow into. We have to be willing to give up as well as to acquire, and it's people like Elizabeth Eckford (and Ruby Bridges) who show us how.