I was thirteen when my family first undertook the trip to Florida to visit my married sister Evelyn and her new baby. My brother Bob and I rode in the back of the ’63 Chevy station wagon, watching as the scenery checked off the states we passed through. Somewhere in North Carolina, near the infamous South of the Border tourist attraction, there was a huge sign along Highway 95 advertising the Colored Motel. The sign had an orange or pink diamond as the backdrop for each black letter--real early '60's design. A bit further on, we stopped for lunch at a family restaurant.  Outside were two water fountains, one marked "White Only" and one marked "Colored Only." I remember thinking that was odd. Why couldn’t all people drink from the same fountain?

This was 1968, the year Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.  Schools had been integrated since the year before I was born.  The Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964, but here in the South the remnants of segregation of the races blatantly lives on.  One year before Woodstock and the free love movement, and the South just wouldn’t let go of its prejudice.

And now, forty years later, a black man is running for president of the United States. Why did it take so long?