Historic Day

January 20 has been Inauguration Day for more than 70 years. Technically, I suppose, it's been an historic day whenever a president has taken the oath of office, whoever the president was, even if the president was taking that oath for the second time (or, in the case of Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the third and fourth times).

But rarely in my lifetime has it been truly historic — in the sense of being a break with the past.

In just a few hours, it will be an historic moment when Barack Obama puts his left hand on the Bible that Abraham Lincoln used to take the oath of office more than a century ago and takes that same oath, becoming the first black president.

I suppose the only comparable moment in my lifetime was 48 years ago when John F. Kennedy took the oath of office, becoming the first (and so far only) Catholic president (although it is worth noting today that the next vice president, Joe Biden, also is Catholic). I wasn't old enough to remember that event.

But I will remember today's inauguration. Come hell or high water, whether this presidency is ultimately judged to be a success or failure, I will remember today's events.

The inauguration of President Obama will mean different things to different people. But, on this day, my thoughts are drawn to the memory of my mother, who died in 1995.

As a young woman, she and my father were Methodist missionaries in Africa for five years. It was during that time that I was born.

When the three of us came back to the United States, my father took a teaching position in central Arkansas, and my mother became an activist in our community. Her experience in Africa taught her important lessons about human relations and racial justice, lessons that she applied to her efforts in Arkansas.

Yesterday, the nation paused to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For the first time on that holiday, I thought about the night in April 1968 when Dr. King was killed. (In case you didn't realize it, it was on January 20 in 1986 that the nation first observed Martin Luther King Day.)

I don't know where my father was that evening. Perhaps he was at a faculty meeting. Perhaps he was teaching a class. Nor do I know where my brother was that night. He was 5 years old at the time. Maybe he was at a friend's house.

But my mother and I were the only ones in our house. Our telephone rang, my mother answered it, and her face went ashen as she listened to the person on the other end of the line.

After she hung up the phone, my mother tried to explain to me, in terms an 8-year-old could understand, what had happened. In a choked voice, she told me that someone she admired and respected had been killed. My mother rarely cried in front of me. But on that occasion, I saw tears running down her cheeks.

Not many, because, as I say, she was not given to that kind of thing in front of her children. But there were enough that I could tell that she was very moved by what had happened. I did not know who King was. I did not know whether my mother was acquainted with the person who had been killed. But I tried to comfort her in my 8-year-old way.

I've always felt that my mother believed that more than a man died that evening. In many ways, I believe that she was convinced that the cause of justice in America had been set back, that some of the things she believed should be might never come to pass.

But that dream did not die in April 1968.

Today, more than 40 years after that evening and nearly 14 years after my mother's death, the dream lives in a way that I wonder if Mom could have imagined. Millions of people will be in Washington today to bear witness to it, and hundreds of millions more will watch it on TV.

Last March, when Texas was about to hold its presidential primaries, I asked my father whether he thought my mother would have voted for Obama or Hillary Clinton. He said he believed she would have voted for Obama. That's certainly possible, considering the years she spent with my father in Africa, but I wasn't so sure then, and I'm still not sure about that. Mom was against racism, but she was also an advocate of education, children, women, single parents and health care, all things that are important to Clinton. I could see her supporting either candidate.

As I told some friends of mine during the recent Christmas holiday, I think Mom probably would have seen it as a race between two qualified candidates (I don't know if she ever felt that way about the electoral choices she had in her life) and that the only regrettable thing was that only one could be nominated. Since Clinton appears to be on her way to becoming the next secretary of state, I think Mom would have been gratified that both will go on to greater service to the nation.

I don't know if there is a heaven, if there is an afterlife. If there is, I'm sure she will be looking down on the scene today and smiling her extraordinary smile — although I'm equally certain that she would say there is still much that needs to be done.

But that's OK. America has always been a work in progress. I think one of the things my mother wanted to teach my brother and me was that America was meant to constantly reinvent itself, to never be satisfied with the status quo, to always seek ways to improve.

As Frederick Douglass said, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

So let's get on with the work that remains. It seems to me that we've struggled enough.