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than any other before it, and the President's pre-election
promises that we don't have a person to waste in America and that people will be first seem to be coming true.

There have been some bad moments amidst all the happy times. In an incredible expression of cowardice and lack of leadership, Congress caved in to Neanderthal bullies and told the people of the District of Columbia, of Puerto Rico and the nation's other colonies that their votes would be counted in Congress only when they won't count at all.

In an ugly revival of the political degeneracy of the Cold War period, the right wing red-baited the distinguished President of Spelman College out of contention for an administration position.

There are sure to be other disappointments, but make no mistake - this is a great time to be living in America, a time when possibilities are endless, when anything can happen.

It is in such times when great changes do occur, and I want to take some time to look back at our past, to other times in other days, when change walked across the land.

These are opportune times for that reflection too.

Frederick Douglass presided over the first Coloured American Day Observance in 1893; Mrs. Blance K. Bruce, whose husband served as Reconstruct era Senator from Mississippi, presented a Negro History Resolution at the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs in 1899. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the recognized father of black history as a scholarly discipline, began Negro History Week in 1926. It became Afro-