Dreams of my father’s dreams of Obama |
Dreams of my father’s dreams of Obama
Ventura County Star
Camarillo, California
2008-11-02
Fifty years ago, when my father, Bill Thrasher, (who was black) and my mother Margaret (who was white) decided to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to do so there. They had to go to the “progressive” state next door, (Iowa!) to be allowed to wed. Growing up in Ventura County, I’d laugh with my parents about how our family wouldn’t exist without Iowa, which didn’t seem so progressive compared to our Southern California surroundings.
And yet, 50 years later, on a cold January night, good old progressive Iowa shocked me once again as it vaulted Barack Obama onto the path to the White House. What would my parents, who once feared raising their children in the Midwest (after all, they had relatives who tried to convince them, in all seriousness, that their children would be striped like zebras), have made of the fact that the child of a union like theirs could have won the Iowa caucuses or, more implausibly, that in less than one week, that man stands to become the 44th president of the United States?…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Steven Thrasher, Steven W. Thrasher, Steven William Thrasher, Ventura County Star