Inauguration of Barack Obama

Yesterday's inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama led me to think about the road we have traveled...and the many miles we still have to go...

We grew up in the 50s in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where my father was the dean of the law school at South Carolina State College. Orangeburg was as segregated a city as you could find in the Deep South. As children we somehow navigated that treacherous landscape and survived its unforgiving times; from the "colored" and "white only" water fountains and restrooms to the segregated schools and movie theaters. Whites worked hard to instill fear in those who longed to undo segregation and years of legal disenfranchisement. The police were legally empowered to "keep people in their place" and use brute force to maintain the status quo. It was segregation de jure.

But there were those who were undaunted by the daily threats they encountered and continued to march in the face of danger. They fought for the basic freedoms guaranteed by our constitution. Some died fighting yet others stood ready to carry their cause forward. Their courage inspired people everywhere to embrace that spirit and to move forward and accomplish feats they never thought they were capable of doing. My father was one of those people.

As a lawyer and writer, he was enlisted by the movement to craft powerful letters of protest and impassioned pleas for justice that were sent anonymously to the governor and to newspapers all over the state. However, I didn't learn that until many years later when I met and interviewed then Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., for a television show in Dayton, Ohio, just three months before he died. He knew it was me who would be interviewing him, and as I approached, my hand outstretched to meet his, he said, "You look just like your father, Dean Gay." I was stunned. "That's right," he said, "your father would type those letters and we destroyed the typewriters because the FBI and state police were looking for us. Didn't he ever tell you that?" No, he didn't. But at that moment I finally knew why my mother whisked her children back to the relative safety of our hometown Detroit, fleeing the constant threats my father and others in the struggle received from the KKK. My father stayed behind in Orangeburg and continued to work in the civil rights movement and fight for justice. With others, he defended students who were spat upon during the sit-ins at the lunch counters and who were beaten and hauled off to jail. Years later, in 1968, police fired on a group of students from South Carolina State who were protesting segregation, leaving three students dead and 27 injured. It became known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

My father and so many others who fought for justice have passed from this world, but their spirit lives on in us. Their struggle is a old as our country itself. After hundreds of years we have come a long way, but still have so much farther to travel. Yesterday, that journey started anew, and now it's become a movement beyond any that preceded it.

President Barack Hussein Obama is a man who inspires people: Black and White, Asian and Hispanic, Native Americans, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, Jews and Gentiles...people the world over. He is a catalyst for change and brings so much hope at a time when the world desperately needs it. We must seize the moment so we can help him. We must vigilantly defend that dream every day. Right is right, wrong is wrong. And after eight years of a woefully incompetent administration, Obama is ready to show us there is a much better way. But he can't do it alone. No, we must spread the word as his disciples, helping others to embrace the challenge he has put before us. Together we can realize his dream, which, after all, is the dream of the whole world ...Yes We Can.