Does skin color matter? It seems so, when...

I was a junior in high school back in 1963.

Yes, that was the same year that our first Catholic President, Kennedy, was assassinated on November 22, while in a motorcade traversing the streets of downtown Dallas, Tx.

For those who are old enough, you might remember exactly where you were, and what you were doing as the terrible news hit the airwaves.

I remember… I had just gotten off the school bus and walked to my friend's house to check out his coin collection: we were both collectors at that time.

While in his house, the phone rang; it was his dad telling him that the president was just shot in Dallas.  When my friend came back to the dining room area, where I was looking through his collection, he said; oh, that was my dad; he was joking about the president being shot.  I didn't think much of it, and we continued exchanging thoughts and ideas about our collections of several different denominations of coins.

When I left his home, some school-girls were walking my way, and, as we approached each other, they asked me if I had heard anything about the president being shot.

Then, it hit me like a ton of bricks; he really was shot; the president was shot!!

During 1963, not only was the killing of President Kennedy the most demoralizing and horrible event of the day for our country, in addition to that tragedy, there were other pressing issues facing our nation that needed attention and solutions too.

Things were heating up in Vietnam (little did I think that four short years later I would be in Vietnam!) and the civil rights movement was in full swing, especially in the South, where federal authorities had to use the power of their office to integrate colleges and universities, and open the doors to black Americans to continue their education.  

One of the most influential leaders of the civil rights movement was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In fact, I wrote my term paper on Dr. King, mainly because of his determination to improve social  conditions for his people, including, but not limited to, the right to use facilities that were once deemed only for whites: transportation, restaurants, voting, etc.  What attracted my to his cause, was his use of peaceful means to accomplish the ends, and to open the door to a new time of equality for all peoples.

Once, while behind bars in Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. King wrote a "letter from a Birmingham jail," extolling the tenets of the Natural Law, and, in fact, quoted St. Thomas Aquinas as well as St. Augustine in determining what a just law is, and what an unjust law is.  I find it interesting that the Protestant King, quoted two Catholic saints in his thesis!

In many of his speeches, King focused on the character of a person, rather than the color of his/her skin.

If King was alive today, I think he would be horrified at the real segregation and discrimination found in the media, and the blatant attacks on his brothers and sisters simply because they are white.  You know, that phony "white privilege" nonsense.

It seems that the mainstream media is daily focused on issues that directly contradict Dr. King's reason for all the sacrifices offered up in order to right so many of the wrongs against his people.  And now, the wrongs are being perpetrated because of skin color -- again -- but this time against Caucasian folks.

It is amazing how so many things have changed, and yet they stay the same....

Pray for our country.  Pray for peace.

Gene DeLalla