This year marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which

effectively nullified legal discrimination on the basis of race and put an end to the

Jim Crow laws that had mandated segregation for so long.

Pastor John, you grew up in South Carolina in those tumultuous days in the 1950s and

60s and now you're 68 years old.

What has changed in these past 50 years?

How different is the racial landscape in America today?

Not everything has changed.

Human nature is still what it is.

Not everything has changed relationally, but there have been stunning changes.

Many for good.

Some for ill.

And as I gave thought to this question, I've written down, just jotted notes here on 10

things.

Let me see if I can just bullet them for people to think and pray about and celebrate

when appropriate.

Number one has to be the president of the United States is black.

If you had told plantation owners 150 years ago, or members of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s,

or white southerners I grew up with, including me, that this would be none would have believed

it.

It is astonishing and wonderful in itself, quite apart from any moral or philosophical

differences we may have with President Obama.

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