I have a weird family background when it comes to civil rights/civil disobedience.

Both my parents were in the FBI after WWII. My mother was one of JEHoovers’s personal phone operators (before direct dial) tasked with listening into her share of his phone conversations. (So he could prove he never said it THAT way.)

My parents were both involved actively helping the inner city people in Chicago during the first part of the civil right stuff, in fact we always adopted other families for Christmas. My mother worried openly about what Mr. Hoover thought about her involvement in Civil Rights and what he had put in her Jacket (his name for his file on everyone). Actually, she was terrified of that man’s wrath 5 years after he died!

We moved to suburban DC in 1969. My mother cried for weeks after Dr. Kings murder, not just for him, but also for the people she cared about started destroying their own area out of utter frustration (the riots).

My dad, on the other hand, talked like it was good thing!!!! If you wanted hear real racial hate speech, just listen to him in our home; it was horrible! I know, thanks to him, every horrible name you can call someone, and EVERY slanderous accusation that Hoover had tried to pin on Dr. King and anyone who sympathized.

So I was torn between the two sides growing up, although I NEVER acted or actually thought bad about anyone I actually knew.

My epiphany came when, as a 20 something went to visit my dad at his office at the FCC. The minute I walked in I was literally mobbed by a sea of black faces! The people in his office, mostly black being in DC, were tripping over each other to grab me and tell me what a great man my father was! They, one by one, told me that, in his office, if you had a problem and were straight with him, he would go to the mat for you! They said that that man was the best example of integrity and fairness they had ever known in their lives! NO ONE held back, and some actually had tears in their eyes. I think they were desperate to tell anyone connected to him how much they appreciated him. To top it off, I met the one person he considered his best friend and one of the few other higher level people he respected: He was the blackest person I had ever seen!

This, to this day, changed my life. I still only have a vague idea about why my dad talked that way at home (never in public BTW). (I suspect that finding out, after he retired, that he had a White-House Security clearance most of his career may be a key. I will never know why.). My mother, of course. then educated me about the things my dad had actually DONE with our church in Chicago.

Dr. King has been since then, one of my greatest heroes.

I now know not to take everyone 100% for what they say or appear to mean, they may have something good or bad to hide in their words. Actions are what it’s all about.

More and better Democrats!

Hear, hear!

And thank you for alluding to Edwards. If elected, I believe that he would be the greatest practical friend to organized labor of him, Clinton, and Obama.