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He said then:

"The pessimist from his corner looks out on the world of wickedness and sin and blinded by all that is good or hopeful in the condition and progress of the human race, bewails the present state of affairs and predicts woeful things for the future.

In every cloud he beholds a destructive storm, in every flash of lightning and omen of evil, and in every shadow that falls across his path a lurking foe.

He forgets that the clouds also being life and hope, that lightning purifies the atmosphere, that shadow and darkness prepare for sunshine and growth, and that hardships and adversity nerve the race, as the individual, for greater efforts and grander victories."ⁱⁱ

"Greater efforts and grander victories." That was the promise made by the generation born in slavery more than 100 years ago. That was the promise made by the generation that won the great world war for democracy more than five decades ago. That was the promise made by those who brought democracy to America's darkest corners three-and-a half decades ago.

That is the promise we must all seek to honor today.

The Civil War that freed my grandfather was fought over whether blacks and whites shared a common humanity. Less than ten years after it ended, the nation chose sides with the losers and agreed to continue black repression for almost 100 years.

Thus, 75 years after the Civil War ended, we fought the great world war against fascism with a segregated army. Another family member, my father-in-law, fought that war and landed two days after D-Day on Normandy Beach.

His name had been the first one called in the draft in Minnesota - newspaper headlines in the Twin Cities announced that Ernest Horowitz's number had come up.

Six days after he landed in France, he was talking to a comrade in a foxhole near a small French town called Ste. Mere Eglise. He looked away for a second, and in that moment a German shell exploded, his friend was killed, and for Ernie Horowitz, his leg shattered, the war was over.

But he had been one of those who saved the world for democracy. The black Americans who fought that war in segregated units came home determined to save democracy for their country. It would be the beginnings of the modern movement for civil rights.

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