During the Christmas holiday I went to visit family in my hometown Oxford, Mississippi.  We walked around the beautiful, peaceful Ole Miss campus, almost deserted between semesters.  The Lyceum building is the symbol of the University:  a beautiful 1848 Greek-columned structure in the center of campus.  It is the primary administration building, housing the chancellor's office and the office of admissions.

We walked to one end of the Lyceum to see a new memorial, a life-size brass statue of young James Meredith walking resolutely forward toward a tall, four-column portal inscribed with the words “courage,” “perseverance,” “opportunity” and “knowledge.” 

When James Meredith sought walk through the doors of the Lyceum to enroll as the University’s first black student in 1962, it took a team of U.S. Marshals, troops from the Mississippi National Guard and regular Army soldiers from Fort Bragg to subdue a violent riot that tried to prevent his admission. 

Walking the beautifully manicured grounds we pointed to chips in the 160-year old brick where bullets ricocheted off the Lyceum that day.  I remembered places where I saw burned out cars and their black stains on the road, remaining in silent testimony for weeks.  We thought of the people who died that day.

From the front door of the Lyceum it is a straight shot down University Avenue to the new auditorium where, this past September, Ole Miss hosted the first presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, almost 46 years from the date when James Meredith enrolled under such dark violence.

I can remember the riots.  I was ten.  I’m nine years older than Barack Obama.  If he had been my age and grown up with me in Oxford instead of Hawaii, it would have been illegal for his parents to marry.  We would have gone to racially separated elementary schools.  He couldn’t go into Leslie’s Drug Store for a nickel Pepsi from the soda fountain; the cafe for Negroes was in an alley down the street.  We would have watched movies in the same theatre, but he would have watched from the balcony.  He would drink from separate water fountains, sit in separate waiting rooms, and go to separate public restrooms.  He might eat food from some of the restaurants my family went to, but it would have been passed to his family out the back door.  And his father would have been called “boy.”  And of course, like the rest of the South, we were a Christian town.

What a lovely conjunction it is that today we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, and tomorrow we inaugurate the first African-American President.  Instead of being called “boy,” we will call Barack Obama “Mr. President.”  Dr. King dreamed of a “day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” 

We’ve made great progress in fifty years.  There is still much to do to root out the deep racism that lives in our bones.  There is much to do to overcome the inequalities that still hold so many people of color in the grips of poverty, prejudice and robbed potential. 

We still have immoral laws that legalize racism, prejudice and inhumanity.  In 1961, right before the great march from Selma, only 130 of that town’s 15,000 adult blacks were legally registered to vote.  That’s fewer than 1%.  Those black citizens of Selma had about the same chance of voting in 1961 as a hard-working, law-abiding laborer from Mexico has to immigrate legally into the U.S. today.  Martin Luther King challenged such injustice:  “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.  Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”  As Arkansas’ Roman Catholic Bishop Anthony Taylor has argued so persuasively, our immigration laws and policies are unjust and violate fundamental human rights.  They should be reformed, not reinforced.

Like the old anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial couples, we still discriminate against our gay and lesbian citizens and the commitment of their loves. 

But Dr. King said that “the moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”   He said that “love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems.”  Just as my generation learned to love our black neighbor as ourselves, God is inviting our current generation to learn to love our immigrant neighbors and our gay and lesbian neighbors as ourselves. 

On the manicured campus of my university stands a bronze statue where bullets and teargas once raged.  It testified that as we walk the path of courage, perseverance, opportunity and knowledge, love prevails and opens the doors of justice for all people.