Being a child of the ’60s does not mean being part of a drug culture to me, or anti-government, or taking part in antiwar demonstrations, though those ideas and activities were certainly prominent. I have always felt proud to be part of the generation that saw great change in racial equality take place in our country. Some of those changes involved violence, which frightened me at the time and still do.

We are not perfect yet, but when you think of the days of segregation and Jim Crow laws, we have clearly come a long…