Dear Editor:

My father, God rest his soul, would never have dreamed that a dark-skinned man would be president in his daughter’s lifetime. I was raised in Georgia, where being prejudice was expected. We weren’t allowed to drink in the same fountain, but I played with their kids while their moms cleaned our house.

I was in eighth grade the year before segregation when a black girl and her brother attended school with us, the only black kids in my grade. I never knew the details. I just remember how afraid I was when I was 10 and my brother and I decided to walk home from the show through an all-black neighborhood. How brave the two black kids were, the only black kids with all these white kids. We were as foreign to them as they were to us.

And now we are fighting over political parties. I’m sick of the donkey and the elephant. It is time for the American eagle. It is time we come together and get over this selfishness and hard-headedness and get to business and make this a better place to live. If the only thing our elected officials are worried about is getting re-elected, then we need to think before we put them back in. If they aren’t worried about helping us keep our jobs, why should we worry about theirs?

Obama inherited the problems he has, and he may not know the solutions. He is just one man, he needs Congress to stop acting like fifth-grade boys bickering over who gets to sit on the front row and dig their heels in and get to work. The good ol’ boys can play another year. We don’t need a Congress of all Republicans nor all Democrats. We need a mix, every meal needs salt and pepper, and differences compliment each other. We must stand united, or divided we will fall.

Phyllis Powell

Southern Pine Drive, LaGrange