I am a child of the Jim Crow South--Born in 1951, in South Carolina, when Jim Crow was alive and well. My memory is alive with the vestiges of "white only" and "No Coloreds." Educated in segregated schools by teachers who taught and enforced values, dignity, respect and self-awareness as children of God with worth far more than the labels of unknowing people.

As soon as I could break away at age 17, I packed up my dreams and headed away. I sought to go anywhere that was not here as fast as I could go. My life in the military carried me on a trek that took me farther south to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana; then North to North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Rhode Island; West to San Diego, Los Angeles.

I saw much of the Western Pacific; Mexico, Hawaii, The Phillipines, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, China, The Gulf, Africa. Finally, I have returned as part of the retro-migration. All that I left in South Carolina in the sixties is still here. However, now with the wisdom and experience imported from other worlds, I perceive that there are new forces and power at work. I am a part of the force that makes a difference.

At the same time that the ages old struggle of evil rages against right, many who left the South in years past, are back energizing the battle in positive directions. Everywhere one looks are signs of change in areas that once served as bastions of hatred and racism. Some say that the evil has just be chased underground. That may be true. I contend that chasing stuff underground is the first step to its ultimate burial.

The lesser migration--the return to homes all across the South is a good thing. Those who properly embrace the lessons of the past to use as a footstool for empowering today's actions, build the framework for the history that will be championed tomorrow. If any lesson comes out of this reverie, it is the admonishment that each of us makes a difference when we decide that we individually are the authors of history. We make a difference in the recorded history of mankind when we decide to make a difference.