I met the real Black Klansman, Ron Stallworth, author of the memoir, BlackKklansman, last Monday night at our local Evanston Book store, Bookends and Beginnings. It's a small, indie bookstore with nooks and crannies, that somehow packed in about 100 people. The event was sold out weeks in advance with a waiting list.
Martin Luther King made his "I have a dream" speech on August 28th, 1963. It was held that day in honor of the anniversary of Emmett Till's torture and murder on the same date, in 1955.
Next Tuesday, August 28, 2018, will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the anti-Viet Nam War Protests that once again (after the ML King riots just five months earlier) turned Chicago into a battleground and divided our city and country into camps; the "law and order" crowd (what Nixon called the "Silent Majority" vs. the anti-war protestors. It was the final melee in a year of turmoil that had roiled the nation.
When I was in eighth grade, our English teacher, Mrs. Hall, asked all the students in class to write an essay on why we thought our dads should be “Father of the Year.”
This Memorial Day, I'm remembering two relatives who each served in one of the 20th century's two world wars.