On Nov. 13, 1956, the Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.

It's worth remembering that the fight for justice and race/ethnic equality and respect has not been won, and that the first steps toward that goal were taken in my lifetime, not hundreds of years ago, making it ancient history.

The fight for justice is right here, right now. I can remember as a child the water fountains labelled "white" and "colored" and protesting to my mother that they were the same color and that the water came out of the same pipe (my stepfather was a plumber).

I can remember registering voters in the deep South, when it was to risk your life to do so. I can remember marching for civil rights, when they set the dogs on us and blasted us with water cannons.

All in my lifetime. It seems so long ago, but it wasn't.

And fair warning: Those rights are not secure. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and exercise of those rights, lest through disuse they become disabled.

We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal....