This is a true story. I originally posted it to my journal, but have decided i think it's an important enough story that i want to share with my groups. I believe i remember the details accuratly, as it's not the type of story one forgets. Please take a moment to read, and if you feel so inclined, to comment. This is not a story about politics. It is a story about hope:

Something life changing happened to my Mom in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1969. Right in that very park where Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech Tuesday night, in front of one of the largest, most diverse, most hopeful groups of individuals i can remember seeing on telivision in recent times. Something that will forever define that period of the civil rights movement to me, and something that solidifed my Mom's already active engagement in the fight for racial equality.

My Mom, a teenager at the time, a hippie, was walking through Grant Park on an early evening. She was 18 at the time, and had already moved out of her family home: away from her parents and 6 siblings: a strict Catholic family with very tradition beliefs.

My Mom was a hippie in the true sense: Very policitcally active, very into the arts. She was, and is, a very open minded, giving human.

She was approached by several young men that evening in Grant Park, and one asked if she had a cigerette. She replied honestly, "No, I'm sorry, i don't smoke". This is the last thing she remembers saying for a long time.

The group of 3 or 4 young men, for some unknown & unknowable reason, immediatly jumped my Mom, taking her to the ground. And once she was on the ground, they beat her. They punched her face. They kicked her face. They screamed at her. All of them. As a group. While she lay helpless on the ground. I'm sure she was terrified. I'm sure she thought she was going to die. I'm sure she was confused. Although the assualt likely only lasted minutes (maybe seconds?), i'm sure it felt like an eternity...

They abandoned her, bloodied and helpless, on the grass at Grant Park that night.

Other people were there. This was not the middle of the night. This was not the projects. Maybe some people who didn't see or hear or believe. Maybe some people who didn't want to see or hear or believe.

But one young man didn't hesitate. A young black man ran to my mother's side, horrified, trying to help. Now please understand - this was a different time. Remember, the Democratic Convention of 1968 was in Chicago. Remember, people of all colors were arrested, even shot at, for peacefully expressing that everyone should be treated like human beings. Remember, racial tensions were very, very high. Black men were regularly assualted for causing 'problems' by trying to better the world. Arrested, imprisoned, for trying to make a future. A different world.

This young black man rushed to help my Mom, who had been badly beaten. He knelt to her side, asking if she was OK. I imagine him there, scared, human, feeling...trying to get a reading from my Mom's terrified, blood-crusted - but still very aware - eyes.

He had decided to act. A middle-aged woman was standing closely nearby, watching - scared, i'm sure - but still, she was just watching. He called to her: Asked if she would hand him her purse, so he could prop up my Mom's devestated face, her swelling head, off of the hard ground. My Mom distinctly remembers this. The woman stood there, clutching her handbag. She couldn't, at first. Even then. Even with a young teenager seriously beaten on the ground. Even with a young woman who was also white -badly beaten on the ground, right in front of her. She simply couldn't hand her purse over to a young black man, in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1969.

Until he demanded it. My Mom tells me he had to actually yell at her. I imagine this, too. Something in his voice, something commanding, not to be questioned, that jolted her out of the absurdity of her denial, the amorality of her inaction.

He propped my Mom's head up. And ran to find a cab. That's right - in a park, with likely dozens of people with cars parked all around it - he had to go hunt down a cab to get my Mom to the hospital.

He carried her to the cab. He laid her in the backseat. He rode with her to the hospital. After they took her into emergency care, he was made to fill out a report, no doubt handing it to someone with suspicious, accusatory eyes. He had to write down his full name, and his address.

My Mom's battle wasn't over. Initially, nobody would help her. She had no I.D. to prove she was 18, and the fear was that she was a teenage hippie runaway, and there could be legal repurcussions to providing medical attention without her parents' consent. Finally a doctor, an older man, whom whe's wondered aloud about on more then one occasion, treated my Mom.

He had said something odd to her. He had said something about there being a lot of noise. At first, she didn't really understand. She heard the sounds of a construction team, breaking down walls, running power tools. She has recounted to me, thinking to herself, while on that table, 'just my luck to go through this at a hospital that's undergoing construction'.

But then the doctor said, 'Now this is going to be even louder'. And it was in that horrible mili-second that she realized with complete clarity, that the hospital wasn't undergoing construction. The noises she was hearing were the sounds of him, working to fix her face! He had to re-break then set the damaged bones. My Mom's jaw was broken in 3 places.

When she was released form the hospital, she asked about the man who had brought her there. They gave her his full name, and address. The address he provided was at a hotel. She went there to thank him. Nobody had ever heard his name, if what he had reported really was his name...

We will never know why he didn't give his real name. I've wondered myself, times were so strange, did he think he'd be blamed for the attack? Did he think he would be watched by the police, then aressted, without (or even with) cause, because, according to the depraved thinking of the time, he was a young black man "playing a hero"?

Years have gone by. But the years number so few, compared to the miles and miles of learning, and growing, and accepting, that have gone by.

And just 2 nights ago, we had a young man with mixed white and african-american heritage make his acceptance speech as the president-elect of the United States. Right there in Grant Park, Chicago, in 2008.

I do not bring these stories together because of race. Quite the contrary. I bring these stories together to show how We The People can overcome basing our decisions on race. I bring this up because i think it is a poignat reminder of just how far we have come (although we stil have so long to go...)

My twin sister called me as the map was turning blue on Tuesday. She had a son when we were teenagers. Like me, she is proud of an america that can overcome judging other's, either one way or another, based on the color of their skin. And she said something amazing to me. She said "My son will become a man in an america where he'll take for granted the fact that a black man can become president. And what a wonderful thing to be able to take for granted!"

I think that says it all...

Thanks, ---EveB