Editor's Note: Guest Columnist today is Jerry Bullock. He is no stranger to the San Marcos Daily Record since he wrote the column "Life's Like That" for over 30 years. He is a Retired Air Force Colonel, an ordained Baptist minister, a professional counselor, a military historian and speaker. His column was forwarded to Brother Jim and is reprinted here with his consent:
"I am proud to be an American. This month The United States of America was 244 years old. In 1863 President Abe Lincoln, speaking at Gettysburg, said: 'Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.' He had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. making all slaves free.
...They were free to enjoy the bounty of this new land. However, for the next one hundred years, White men, Southern Democrats, said: "as long as they stay in 'their' place"...and made sure Blacks living in the south did. Through roadblocks to voting; to being sent to sit in the back of the bus; to separate drinking fountains and restrooms, and to separate (and unequal) public schools and to many other legal ploys, Black people and their children were denied full participation in American.
