A Springfield civil rights leader reflects on President Obama's inauguration
Thursday, January 22, 2009
By Natalia Muñoz
He's 71 now and his legs can't carry him anywhere near the long distances he regularly marched for civil rights in his younger days.
For this presidential inauguration, Rance O'Quinn sat down and watched on television the embodiment of one of the civil rights movement's highest goals take the oath of office.
It's been a long walk to Jan. 20, 2009 for the man born and raised in Centreville, Miss., a small town of mostly sharecroppers near the Louisiana border. His father was shot in the back of the head on Aug. 14, 1959 for educating other black Americans about their rights.
O'Quinn became president of the Springfield branch of the NAACP; a director of investigations for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination; a staff member at the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights; a supervisor of investigations and acting area office director for the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission in Boston.
There are names and dates, births, deaths and killings, the blessings of his family, what he lost along the way and now, Barack Obama.
He has simple advice for the new president: "Steady as you go."
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