In 1708, the Americas were dotted with colonies controlled by European powers. The chances that anyone who wasn't a landowning white man could vote were slim to none, even in places where voting existed.
In 1808, the importation of slaves to the United States was banned, but slavery continued. Women were virtually property, and Native Americans were being "resettled" to make way for Western expansion.
In 1908, women still couldn't vote and segregation was the norm. There were immigration quotas and exclusion acts.
In 2008, the United States of America elected its first non-white president.
What will 2108 bring?
What victories will we have won for our grandchildren?
I have hope today. Because I stood in a line that Susan B. Anthony wasn't allowed to, because Barack Obama will take an oath that Frederick Douglass was only allowed to witness, I have hope that even if it doesn't happen for me, we will win the fights we fight today. The seeds that we plant will bear fruit, and though the plow may callous our hands, our children and grandchildren will reap fields of justice. Someday, we will tell children that it used to be illegal to marry the person you loved, and they will look at us with incredulity. Someday, learning that people used to go bankrupt because of their medical bills will make our grandchildren shake their heads and wonder what on earth was wrong with us. Some day, we will judge people not on their race, on their gender, on their religion, but on their character.
Some day, we will have formed the perfect union that our founders dreamed of on a hot Philadelphia afternoon, because "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
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