A sad ending to an era....

Once upon a time, in a land long ago and far away, there was a bright young man who got elected to Congress. He stood for progressive ideals and was as great a champion of the underdog, the oppressed and the poor as anyone this town had ever seen. He spoke truth to power, caused people to love him and despise him, sometimes in the same week.

He was attacked and prosecuted for crimes he did not commit, and the case was so bad that 12 white folks from rural West Tennessee saw through them and acquitted him. He would occasionally say something that angered his district, but since he helped one and all, no matter whether they lived in his district or not, he was usually quickly forgiven by all but the most rabid haters.

The day came when he presented his eldest son and said, this is who I want to succeed me, and the district agreed, and, for a while, the eldest son showed promise, even though his party was no longer in power.

Then, things began to change. The eldest son, bearing the name of the father, attacked the President of HIS OWN PARTY due to the President's personal failings. Then he began to act as if he had been raised in East Tennessee, not South Memphis. The father, once the champion of the land, moved east and south and began to disappear while his namesake sounded more Republican than those who had dared to challenge his father. The namesake even praised the new President, of the OTHER Party, who had led this country to disaster after disaster, and seemed ashamed of the party of his birth.

The namesake sought to run for higher office, and the father, once the champion of the poor and the oppressed, came home from parts unknown to help his eldest son, and then to have his youngest son keep the seat in the hands of the family, even if it meant opposing the party that had brought he and his children wealth and fame.

The old champion, now a shell of himself, began organizing ministers in the black community as if it were somehow 1974 all over again, but things were now different. People in that community, people who had been with him for years, asked, WHY? We have a new champion, and he may not look like you do but he sures VOTES like you did, and he is the nominee of our party. You've been away for so long and you really don't know how things are any more. Enough is enough, they said, stop this.

However, like Willie Mays stumbling in the 1973 World Series, the old warrior kept on, not realizing that in his efforts to continue the legacy, he was endangering the eldest son in his own back yard. The rival chieftain smacked down the old warrior and proved to most that the old warrior was now a stranger in his hometown, and all was being lost.

The moral of our story, for which the final chapter has yet to be written, will still be that one should never take anything for granted, and that things always change, whether we want them to or not.