It was a bright, golden November afternoon in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Later that day the nation's current top-ranked college football team would play the Moccasins from the University of Tennessee - Chattanooga in front of a crowd numbering in excess of 80,000 people. The tall, balding man in his mid-70s walked down the sidewalk of the thoroughfare running from downtown to the center of the campus, alone with his thoughts in the midst of throngs of excited fans.
For more than a week, he had not been able to shake off the fear and sadness he felt on learning the outcome of the election. His country, the world's best hope (maybe its only hope) for liberal democracy, had surrendered itself to a racist bully determined to return the nation to its dark days of white supremacy and contempt for the poor, the foreign, and those among us who are different. Each installment of news from the transition brought new horrors about the elevation to high office of the dregs of the nation's loathsome underbelly of white nationalism, prejudice and hatred. Even here, back on a campus that he loved as much as any spot on earth, all he could feel was gloom.
In no mood to mingle with the crowds of happy alumni and fans, he detoured off onto a shaded sidewalk that ran between two of the University's stately old academic buildings. It was an area of the campus that he knew well from his days as a student, and it held happy memories for him. This was the place where he and his beautiful wife-to-be had met each day after they got out of their classes during the summer of 1964. His mood began to improve as he recalled the joy and anticipation he had experienced more than a half-century ago each time he spotted her coming toward him on the sidewalk. They spent every waking hour together that summer, except when they were in class. They walked together hand in hand through the campus. They took rides in his elderly Dodge Dart, she sitting close against him on the front seat. (There were no bucket seats in that more young-love-friendly time.) On nights when he didn't have a rehearsal or performance, they often went to the College of Education Library, tangling their feet together under the table where they were "studying". Within a couple of months after that summer, he persuaded her to withdraw from school and marry him, and neither of them had any regrets about the decision over the intervening decades. Yes, he was truly on hallowed ground.
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Then the man noticed the only other occupants of the sidewalk, a couple of students walking side by side about twenty feet ahead of him. She was small and slender, with a pleasant face and jet black hair. Her skin was the color of rich black coffee with a few drops of cream stirred in. Her companion also was quite slender, but a head taller, with shaggy blond hair. His pale skin had been slightly blistered by the hot Alabama sun. As the man watched from behind, the boy reached down and took the girl's hand. She looked up at him with a smile, and moved a little closer to him as they continued to walk down the sidewalk, brushing lightly against each other with each step. The old man stopped his progress and watched the couple until they disappeared around the corner of the building, reluctant to interfere any further with their brief moment of privacy. At his last glimpse of the pair, the man raised his hand to them as if in salute, or perhaps benediction. He brushed away a tear, and continued on his way to join his family for the game.
Later, as he thought back to the brief encounter, the man realized that the young couple represented a ray of hope for him in the midst of the despair caused by the election. Their relationship would have been impossible, unthinkable, at the University of Alabama in 1964. Now, they are not even an oddity. They are just another couple in all the thousands of couples that have met and fallen in love during their time on campus. Their love, especially if they have children together, makes the most powerful argument imaginable against the fictions of race the President-Elect and his cronies have used to divide the country. The two students are part of a tide of young people who will not be deterred by lies and racial myths from connecting to each other, and those connections will surely transform us into a happier and healthier society that will never again be vulnerable to the manipulations of demagogues.
God save and protect these two young people and their love for each other. They may well be the salvation of our country. Amen and Amen.
Thomas R. Borden
Waugh, Alabama
November 22, 2016
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