I saw this article in Sunday’s section of the Herald, the local Long Island newspaper I grew up reading. The article recalls a historic event in Rockville Centre, my hometown. On March 26, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at South Side Junior High, the middle school I attended. Nine days after the speech, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis. A few people who were there for the speech at South Side contributed to the article.

“It was exciting – it was beautiful,” said Catherine Pucciarelli, a village resident who was a board member of the local chapter of the Economic Opportunity Council and active in its fight against poverty and inequality. “He was marvelous, riveting. People hardly breathed when he spoke. He didn’t use notes, he spoke from the heart. Although there were a lot of blacks in the audience, he realized he was speaking to a predominantly white audience. What he wanted to say was that we are all the same, and if we want to succeed, we have to do it together.”
“It was something you would never forget,” added Pucciarelli, who was in her mid-30s at the time. “You could have heard a pin drop. No one got restless.”

The person who showed me this article was my friend Alli’s father – a conservative, white, middle class Catholic man – who proudly proclaims that he was there for Dr. King’s speech. He pushed the paper to me across the dining table while all together we watched the pre-inauguration concert with Beyonce and Tom Hanks on the television in their kitchen on Sunday. Knowing he voted for McCain and that we’ve got some differing views on race, abortion, homosexuality, marriage, sex, immigration, religion, and a few other things, I expected some Obama-bashing, but to my surprise there was none. “You know, I was there,” he bragged. “In that auditorium when Dr. King spoke. I’ve probably told you a billion times,” which was true, he had. I know he and I disagree on countless issues, but that doesn’t stop him from opening his home to me and treating me like a member of his family, and from me doing the same for him. After we watched the program, we all agreed that it was really a very nice concert. Though I don’t know whether it brought tears to everybody’s eyes (I have turned into a sucker for all that “Oh, Beautiful for Spacious Skies” stuff as of late), I felt in myself a swelling of emotion. Maybe we really can sort of start to coexist and hang out and agree and disagree and eat Chinese takeout and play Scrabble and argue about abortion and give Hanukkah gifts and Christmas gifts and at the end of the day say, “Take care, see you soon.” Maybe I’m an idealist, but I really see some major potential here.

The photo from Dr. King’s speech at South Side makes me feel proud. I know that auditorium. I know that stage. I sang “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” on that stage. The fact that I maybe shared some footsteps with Dr. King makes me feel exceptionally proud of my  community for opening their minds to the words of Dr. King. I hope that Rockville Centre and the conservative parts of Long Island and all over the country will similarly open their hearts to President Obama, regardless of whether or not they agree with all his views, and let themselves be touched by our common connection to this country – which I find, despite all its flaws, is really quite a beautiful place.

I’ll probably be sobbing when I watch Obama get sworn in today (sobbing in a good way). I can’t help myself. It’s that overwhelmingly cool.