#19. Women need to treasure this time in history.

This week our country will so poignantly observe two of America’s finest:

• Martin Luther King Jr., the greatest civil rights leader of all times – representing a dream for a better America.


• Barack Obama, soon to be our 44th President and the first African American president - symbolizing a dream being fulfilled.

Those who have the oomph to brave the gridlocked traffic, the freezing cold, and millions of people packed together like sardines on the National Mall, will end up with a slew of pictures and their pick of nearly 100 Presidential Inauguration Events. But the rest of us need not feel like bystanders. If I may, I would encourage you to:

1. Take the time to talk to a young person about the American Civil Rights movement. If you are not well versed on this subject, then invite them to do some research or to attend any number of the local Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative events planned for your community, and later discuss your experiences. This could be your Monday MLK activity.


2. Take the time to talk to someone from the “old guard”. Choose a person at least 70 years old, white, black or purple. Ask them about their thoughts on the Civil Rights movement to the Present (and the new Black First Family moving into the White House). This could be done on Tuesday, some time after President Obama’s inaugural address.


3. Journal about each conversation, each activity and the related emotions. Archive your notes safely for posterity.

If you care to share, or brag, about what you have planned – please be my guest. Whatever you do, Celebrate!

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" by James Weldon Johnson