Opinion: We all have a responsibility to make the USA a great nation

A few years ago, as the July 4 holiday neared, I wrote a sweet and nostalgic little column recalling how Independence Day was celebrated in my tiny foothills town on July 4, 1965.

On that day, just a few weeks before I turned 10 years old, the whole town turned out in the late afternoon for an old-fashioned fish fry, the filets of perch and of flounder sizzled up in bubbling vats of  hot grease by the town elders.

Baked beans, coleslaw, and homemade ice cream supplemented the main dish.

To fill the hours between supper and sunset, softball games were held on the adjacent recreation center softball diamond, including an old-timers’ game in which my dad manned right field for one of the squads — the only athletic endeavor I ever saw him undertake.

When twilight finally edged toward full darkness, the town elders proceeded to touch off what was, for a young boy, a magnificent fireworks show — the rockets soaring into the sky and bursting over the backdrop of the nearby peaks of the South Mountains.

In a world in which so much of the news seems so bad — the lingering effects of the COVID pandemic, stratospheric gasoline prices, and ongoing war in Europe — it is easy and tempting to grow wistful and nostalgic about seemingly more innocent and more gentle times.

But were they?

No black faces populated the crowd on that long ago July 4. Despite slowly changing laws and even more slowly changing attitudes, that little town remained a fully segregated community, and, as I later learned, some of the town elders were virulent  racists who fully supported  “whites only.”

The explosively violent riot in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles was but a few weeks in the future, and before the decade was out the fires of racial violence would flare in cities all across America.

The nation was indeed changing, but in the county seat those born with black skin could not yet eat in the dining room of a public restaurant or stay in a hotel, and, if watching a movie in the theater, were consigned to the “colored” balcony.

A more peaceful evening is hard to imagine than that of an Independence Day now 57 years in the past, but the world was most definitely not at peace.

In South Vietnam, the number of American armed men with boots on the ground would swell from 23,310 at the beginning of 1965 to 184,314 by its end.

Americans killed in action jumped from 216 in 1964 to nearly 2,000 in 1965.

And, because war requires young men to bear its burden, the number drafted rose from 112,991 in 1964 to 230,991 in 1965.

Fighting intensified in South Vietnam. American bombers reigned terror on North Vietnam, and somehow the United States found itself literally blundering into an unwinnable land war in Asia in which nearly 60,000 young men would die.

The skies were clear and the stars shining that July 4 night as the fireworks exploded far above.

But many furniture factories, textile mills, and coal-fired power plants belched black and noxious fumes into the air constantly, often leaving a dirty cover of soot on cars, front porches, and picture windows.

Even more frightening, many industries dumped wastes directly into rivers and streams — the same rivers and streams from which our drinking water was extracted.

Strip away the hazy veil of nostalgia, and the world of 1965 was a dangerous and complicated and exciting place — as is the world of 2022.

But men and women of courage worked then, as they are working now, to ensure that justice and equality were not just noble ideals but the foundation of the law and the touchstone of our society.

But men and women of courage worked then, as they are working now, to attain the ancient promise of Isiah, when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.”

But men and women of courage worked then, as they are working now, to ensure that this small, fragile planet remains healthy enough to sustain life, not just for this century but as far into the future as the human eye can see.

The “good old days” seem so good mainly because they are so far in the past. But the future is now and each of us, as citizens of this great republic, has a responsibility to do our part to make the United States a great, and good, and decent nation.

Happy Independence Day!

And more importantly, Happy birthday America!

Bill Poteat may be reached at wlpoteat@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: We all have a responsibility to make the USA a great nation