God's Children

I am a 73-year-old daughter of the south and I voted for Obama. I grew up in a small southern town on a farm. We had one black family in our community. The children were not allowed to attend our school, one of the teachers taught them in her home after school.

At harvest time their father worked in the fields with the white men, but at lunch time the white men ate at the table and the black man ate alone on the back porch. He took care of the white cemetery and my mother felt they were very gracious when he died. They allowed him to be buried in the cemetery behind the pump house.

I was in my teens before I went outside the community. Staying in Denver with friends I decided to go to a movie. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I was embarrassed to discover I had invaded the black section.

They had always sat in the balcony at home. When I looked around to find the white section I saw there were black and whites all sharing the same area; that was the first time I was made aware, and that was when I began to see my world and questioned its values. My community must have destroyed this family's sense of self and hurt them more than I can ever imagine.

It is time the older generation stepped aside and allowed the next generation to govern their own destiny.

I watched the people around the world cheering in the streets as the election results come in. I hoped what I was seeing and feeling was a shift in world consciences, that we can all learn that we are one. We are all God's children.

Irene Brinkley Knutson
Sebring