This is a great photoessay. My father-in-law was a civil rights worker in rural Louisiana in the early 60s, and put his own life in danger to register black voters in hostile areas, places where the Ku Klux Klan was deeply integrated with local police and government, and where civil rights workers were all too frequently murdered by the KKK while in police custody.

All of us - regardless of our ethnicity - owe a debt of gratitude to these courageous men and women who fought for liberty and justice right here on our own shores, standing up to authority to fight for what is right. They are American heroes.

I enjoyed some of Roger Wilkins comments the most with whom I very much agree:

"I think this post-racial talk is nonsense we've been a racist country since before 150 years before we were an actual country. But I do think if Obama is successful if he really does some rational things about the Middle East and gets a second term he may deliver something pretty close to a non-racial America."

In all its flawed glory, here is a portrait of the real Old Guard, the people who led us at last to the starting line this past November. No one says it better, for me, than Ms. Lottie Pearl Avery: "This is what's supposed to happen."

Ms. Avery, "That skinny boy, the really light one" couldn't be happier reading those words from you. It was and is "what's suposed to happen." Thank you for being one of the prime movers behind it ever happening.

God bless you, dear lady, and every single soul who would not be moved.

It is sad that the cause of racial equality, which has not been fully achieved, has been hijacked by so many immoral causes. I read the other day that the pedophiles of America, or something like that, liken laws against pedophilia to laws discriminating against blacks.

The crazy, like the poor, are with us always. I think the balance of us know the difference, though.

Still, it is infuriating when stuff like this even gets ink.

I'll be ashamed for you, okay?

As a 17 year old “Negro” I joined the US Army. All I knew was that my country needed me and my family was a military family. Mixed in my head were the ravages of racism my love for Jimi Hendrix, reefer, the peace movement and a desire “that we all get along”. In the Army I met white sergeants who told me I was supposed to “only” listen to James Brown and not rock music, too. I loved James Brown but I also loved Jimi Hendrix and Jeffro Tull and Led Zepplin. The other Blacks beat me up and called me an Uncle Tom, until I purchased a pistol and started shooting at them. The Army told me if I acted more like a ni**er I wouldn’t have these problems. The pain of trying to figure all of these emotional turmoil’s with my underdevelopd mind resulted in my making horrible decisions, to anesthetize my pain with drug addiction, violence and damn near death several times before I finally grew the hell up and decided to be my own man. I will never hate another person because of the color of their skin. It never dawned on me that we would never have a black President. I always assumed that any man gets what his hand calls for. If any man is smart enough, learns the game, no matter what game we speak of and refuses to be defined by others he can have what he wants in this life. The trick is to not allow others inside your head and keep moving forward. That’s what Mr. Obama did and GOOD FOR HIM!

A wonderful job. But the most relevant statement is that made by the silence of our friends who were the most towering civil rights leaders and who, sadly, stand down when most needed. See http://www.nbjcoalition.org/about/supporters.html

Born in 1955, caucasion/male, lived quite life on wealthy resort sm. island. Saw and lived with, as neighbors/friends, american/afican individuals called: house help.

I know I'm short on alot of knowledges, but I have (1)one underlying question:

When are they going to list, caucasion - lower middle class -upper poor, on the discrimination profile? As a minority?

They have it for every other nationalality which has immigrated here, or the utilization of "trump cads" for acts of discrimination/wrongdoing, which the news medias have provided.

NOBODY seems to listen to my pleas for help. AM I "crying wolf", NO...I just don't seem to understand alot, and am looking for answers. Very simple.

WHY ME.

At college in the early sixties we talked about integration, and I remember one theme was how unfair it would be to a child of a mixed marriage to be raised without his or her clear racial identity. How foolish! Now, my son, a redhead, has married a beautiful black African woman (he lives in Oman) and their daughter, my first grandchild, is beautiful and confident and, of course, loved to pieces by all... so it's not just the president whose vision has changed since the sixties...

Considering some of the letters here, it's ironic that Glenn Greenwald's post on endless right-wing self-pity is quite prominent in the sidebar right now. Some people act as if victimhood is a zero-sum game, as if somebody else's victimhood depletes their right to be a victim or some sort of suchness -- because they wrongly see this photoessay as being solely about victimhood.

There is only one minority in our country today and that is the individual and their freedom. Today we have people everywhere of all races trying to demish the individual by creating class envy thereby destroying the freedom we were all born with.

Since civil Rights is the subject. I have one question? First FACT the Democrats known as the Dixie Crates were instrumental in prolonging segregation. Robert Byrd a know KKK leader is still with us. He was not only a leader in the Klan but the leader of the Dixie crates with Al Gores Father. Who by the way both voted against the Civil Rights Bill and yet they are in the same party with Al Sharpten, Jesse Jackson, The black Caucus and Obama. What does that say about those folks? Who are they really for? Maybe I can help. I lived in the south in a mill town and worked in those cotton fields late forties and early fifties. Many of the cotton fields were managed by black masters who were loyal to the plantation owners.

Another recorded FACT is there were more Republicans who signed to approve the Civil Rights Bill then Democrats and yet the Democrats ran the House and Senate as they do today.

My question to anyone? How is it over 40 years the majority of the black vote goes to the Democrats the very party that caused and condoned the grief they suffered?

I'll tell you why because no one is free to be an individual when one group is intent to control them through deception and deceit. I learned in those fields that the only true security in life is within yourself. Know one is more interested in you then you are. When you take your life back and put it in your hands then you are truly free.