Much to praise America for

It’s just a small, rectangular piece of onion-skin paper. It was handed to us at the entrance to the exhibit, at the site of a national monument, actually. They also gave us a soft-lead pencil with the paper. It was up to us to find the information we wanted. And we did. Partway along a wall – several hundred yards long and four-feet high – containing the inscribed names of thousands and thousands of immigrants, we found the names we were looking for.

“Magdalene Kontozis Kontozoglu,” read one name, and below it, “Theodosios Kontozolglu.” (more…)

The will that sparks change

Double T Diner, where I worked and learned in 1965.

I should have recognized the prophetic nature of his view of life. I could have understood it, if I’d experienced as much living as he had. But when I met him, he was a 50-year-old dishwasher in the back of the Double T Diner, a popular roadside diner near Baltimore, Maryland, and I was a 16-year-old bussing tables and stocking shelves in the same restaurant, owned and operated by my uncle. I worked many a hot night side-by-side with Mr. Beale (as we all knew him) back in the summer of 1965. And early on in our kitchen co-worker relationship, I naively asked him what life as an African American had taught him.

“We shall overcome,” he said. (more…)