“Kids, I was conceived a slave but born free.” That’s what John Israel Stamps used to tell his children.

A lifelong Arkansas sharecropper and Baptist minister, he entered this world on May 1, 1865 and left it at the age of 74. I know these facts about him because his son and my friend, Emerson Stamps, himself now 85 years of age, decided last November to write his father a letter.

Emerson and I have belonged to the same prayer group for the past dozen years. This resident of West Roxbury continues to inspire me with his deep spirituality and his love for people of all sorts.

He cares especially about his family, now widely extended. Among its members, he counts six children, nine grandchildren, and twelve great grandchildren. With pride, he brings them together in family reunions and shares with them some of the history he has lived through.

In his letter, Emerson tells his father about “the changes that have happened in my lifetime since you have left this reality.” Chief among these changes ranks the day, last fall, “when a Black person would be elected President of the United States of America.”

When that day arrived, Emerson felt an almost unprecedented pride in his country. Its only equal, he writes, was “that which I felt when I landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, l944 and helped drive Hitler’s army out of France to free the world of fascism.”

But Emerson’s heroic service to his country did not erase his experience of racism. When he got back home from the army, he went to the courthouse in uniform to get his discharge papers accepted. The judge told him to give up his seat for a white person.

Racism was written even more bitterly into his father’s life, despite slavery having been officially abolished. “Your work as a sharecropper was practically like slavery,” his son reminds him. “You were always in debt to the farmer for your food in winter and your rent. And you never could pick enough cotton to get out of debt, so you couldn’t leave.”

Emerson’s first memories, he recalls, centered around the cotton sacks. His mother used to take him out into the fields, placing him on the sacks while she worked. He remembers seeing the perspiration on her face and wonders why the hot sun and other rigors of the work did not kill her.

To spare his mother this ordeal, the child Emerson took to pretending illness so that she would have to stay home rather than go into the cotton fields. But she had to work; and rather than leave her son at home alone, she would place him in the shade of the wagon.

In the letter Emerson recalls how his father had instructed his young son to protect himself. “You taught me not to talk to white folks, I know that was to save my life, so I wouldn’t get hurt, wouldn’t get put in jail. They’d hang Black people in trees. I remember a neighbor’s son got shot for no infraction at all.”

“Well, that’s all changed now, Pappa, through the efforts of many strong Black women and men who marched in the streets, attacked by dogs and club-whipped by police.”

Of all those who took part in the struggle, he mentions two who stand out in his memory. One was Malcolm X; the other, Martin Luther King. And he adds, “There were many good white people, since died, who helped us to get our civil rights.”

Working up to a climax, Emerson then explains to his father the changes that he could never have imagined. “Pappa, we’ve never seen an election like this in any country in the world, where a people can go from the back of the bus to the front seat in the White House. Only in America could this happen.”

For Emerson, this astounding change means that the Declaration of Independence was not a finished document when written but rather a work in progress.

And he now feels part of that progress: “I feel we as a people are now included in that famous document. After years of struggling, Americans came together and decided to blend their voices and energy for the good of the United States.”

As he watched the inauguration on television, Emerson cried with joy at every word.

And he now notices how a change has come over people since the election of Barack Obama. “Blacks and whites─everyone seems more friendly. I heard people say it’s like a cloud of despair has been lifted. They smile more when you pass them on the street. There’s more eye to eye contact. To me, the world seems a better place.”

This letter needs no commentary from me. Instead, I feel content to relish its account of a dramatic turning point in history that I feel privileged to have lived long enough to share.

Richard Griffin