Time
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
~William Shakespeare
From one generation to the next, real change takes time.
In this country’s short history, time has brought about significant changes exceedingly slowly.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation changed history by fundamentally shifting the focus of the war from reuniting the states to abolishing slavery. Yet the freed slaves continued to be deprived of basic rights under the law for over one hundred years.
In 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention Center, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott led the way for American women (and women all over the world) by starting a 70 year struggle to secure a woman’s right to vote. On August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment passed, and 88 years later, and 158 years after the movement started, Hillary Clinton ran for President and came very close to winning the nomination from her party. In the same year, Sarah Palin ran as the Vice-Presidential candidate.
The US had a long history of miscegenation laws with the first enacted in the 1600′s. In the 1920′s, 38 states had laws forbidding interracial marriage and by the 1950′s almost half the states had such laws. In 1967, the US Supreme Court ruled on the issue in Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote on behalf of the Court: “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry or not marry a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed upon by the State.” With that decision, all the remaining anti-miscegenation laws in the country were null and void.
In 1896, the US Supreme Court put its imprimatur on segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson declaring segregation valid as long as segregation laws resulted in “separate but equal” treatment. in 1952, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear Brown v. Board of Education. The case was a politically charged one. The future of race relations in the US was at stake. According to the Smithsonian website, Chief Justice Vinson and several others on the court were hesitant to endorse the ideal of equal opportunity, regardless of race. In September 1953, Vinson died and President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren Chief Justice. Chief Justice Warren wrote the opinion of the court, “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group…Any language contrary to this finding is rejected. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Chief Justice Warren’s leadership “changed the course of American history.”
Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration. – Kahlil Gibran
