I started first grade in the fall of 1961 at Ellicott City Elementary School in Ellicott City, Maryland. (The beautiful old stone building is still there, but it was turned into condos many years ago.) I remember being eager to learn to read, and my teacher who seemed impossibly old, and not being able to color within the lines. They wheeled a television into our class so we could watch John Glenn blast off into outer space. All the other kids in class looked a lot like me.
But my second-grade class looked a little different. There were two colored children (that's the term polite white people used back then, instead of the "n" word) in my class that year, a boy and a girl. I don't remember the girl's name. The boy was named Thomas Jensen. Howard County schools had been integrated.
I'm not sure why I even remember Thomas Jensen's name. In our class photo, taken at our desks in our classroom, I'm sitting at the front, and he is sitting at the back. We were never friends, although I don't remember us being unfriendly. Having an African-American boy in class didn't even seem that odd to me.
But some of the other children weren't happy about it. I remember one of the little girls yelling at Thomas. She said that her mother told her that he shouldn't even be at our school, but he should be at another school. I didn't know then that she was talking about the formerly segregated school. I also didn't understand why that little girl was so upset and angry. But Thomas didn't yell back at her; I don't remember him saying anything. He just kept on coming to school.
Now that I have the perspective of 45 years, I know why the little girl was angry. And I have also come to realize that Thomas Jensen was a brave boy. He was one of millions of African-American children who helped change our society. Thomas helped blaze the trail for Barack Obama.
So when I watched Barack Obama claim the nomination of the Democratic Party last Tuesday night, I was in awe. Within the span of 50 years, within my lifetime, we have gone from segregation to nominating an African-American to be President. And I thought about Thomas Jensen, and wondered where he is today, and wondered if he was watching Obama with the same sense of awe. And I wept, tears of joy and of pride and of amazement.
I did not think I would live to see this day.