Faithful to My Father's Dream

Abstract

It has been more than a year since I sat with my older brother at my father's side, watching him slowly succumb to pancreatic cancer. At the age of seventy-two, James Bevel had seen and experienced more than most men. As I looked at him, I thought about the father he was to me, the civil rights leader he was to many, and the flawed and troubled man whose fate seemed to coincide with one of the subjects in the great Greek tragedies he enjoyed so much. My father was from the same generation as the grandparents of many of my peers. It is a struggle for people of my generation to understand how far African Americans have come since the days of slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow, and the black freedom movement. In the era of Twitter, Facebook, iPhones and other daily distractions, few take time to reflect on the struggles that shaped our present and future.