This story came to me from somewhere recently. Believe it!!  I was

here during those days and I remember them well.

I even recall a dream that I had as a youngster. We were visiting the

Lincon Memorial and Honest Abe leaned over and patted me on the back

and said "Preston, you have been a good boy, keep it up".

The Lincon Memorial was completed some 10 years before I was born in

1927.

A Mason-Dixon Memory

Dondre Green glanced uneasily at the civic leaders and sports figures

filling the hotel ballroom in Cleveland. They had come from across the

nation to attend a fund-raiser for the National Minority College Golf

Scholarship Foundation. I was the banquet's featured entertainer.

Dondre, an 18-year-old high school senior from Monroe, Louisiana, was

the evening's honored guest.

"Nervous?" I asked the handsome young man in his starched white shirt

and rented tuxedo.

"A little," he whispered, grinning.

One month earlier, Dondre had been just one more black student

attending

a predominately white school. Although most of his friends and

classmates were white, Dondre's race was never an issue. Then, on

April 17, l991, Dondre's black skin provoked an incident that made

nationwide news.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the emcee said, "our special guest, Dondre

Green."

As the audience stood applauding, Dondre walked to the microphone and

began his story. "I love golf," he said quietly. "For the past two

years, I've been a member of the St. Frederick High School golf team.

And though I was the only black member, I've always felt at home

playing at mostly white country clubs across Louisiana."

The audience leaned forward; even the waiters and busboys stopped to

listen. As I listened, a memory buried in my heart since childhood

fought its way to life.

"Our team had driven from Monroe," Dondre continued. "When we arrived at

the Caldwell Parish Country Club in Columbia, we walked to the putting

green."

Dondre and his teammates were too absorbed to notice the conversation

between a man and St. Frederick athletic director James Murphy. After

disappearing into the clubhouse, Murphy returned to his players.

"I want to see the seniors," he said. "On the double!" His face seemed

strained as he gathered the four students, including Dondre.

"I don't know how to tell you this," he said, "but the Caldwell Parish

Country Club is reserved for whites only." Murphy paused and looked at

Dondre. His teammates glanced at each other in disbelief.

"I want you seniors to decide what our response should be," Murphy

continued. "If we leave, we forfeit this tournament. If we stay,

Dondre can't play."

As I listened, my own childhood memory from 32 years ago broke free.

In 1959, I was 13 years old, a poor black kid living with my mother

and stepfather in a small black ghetto on Long Island, New York. My

mother worked nights in a hospital, and my stepfather drove a coal

truck. Needless to say, our standard of living was somewhat short of

the American dream.

Nevertheless, when my eighth-grade teacher announced a graduation trip

to Washington, D.C., it never crossed my mind that I would be left

behind. Besides a complete tour of the nation's capital, we would

visit Glen Echo Amusement Park in Maryland. In my imagination, Glen

Echo was Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm and Magic Mountain rolled into

one.

My heart beating wildly, I raced home to deliver the mimeographed

letter

describing the journey. But when my mother saw how much the trip cost,

she just shook her head. We couldn't afford it.

After feeling sad for 10 seconds, I decided to try to fund the trip

myself. For the next eight weeks, I sold candy bars door-to-door,

delivered newspapers and mowed lawns, Three days before the deadline,

I'd made just barely enough. I was going!

The day of the trip, trembling with excitement, I climbed onto the

train. I was the only nonwhite in our section.

Our hotel was not far from the White House. My roommate was Frank

Miller, the son of a businessman. Leaning together out of our window

and dropping water balloons on tourists quickly cemented our new

friendship.

Every morning, almost a hundred of us loaded noisily onto our bus for

another adventure. We sang our school fight song dozens of times, en

route to Arlington National Cemetery and even on an afternoon cruise

down the Potomac River.

We visited the Lincoln Memorial twice, once in daylight, the second

time at dusk. My classmates and I fell silent as we walked in the

shadows of those 36 marble columns, one for every state in the Union

that Lincoln labored to preserve. I stood next to Frank at the base of

the 19-foot seated statue. Spotlights made the white Georgian marble

glow. Together, we read those famous words from Lincoln's speech at

Gettysburg remembering the most bloody battle in the War between the

States: "...we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died

in vain - that this nation, under God shall have a new birth of

freedom..."

As Frank motioned me into place to take my picture, I took one last

look at Lincoln's face. He seemed alive and so terribly sad.

The next morning, I understood a little better why he wasn't smiling.

"Clifton," a chaperone said, "could I see you for a moment?"

The other guys at my table, especially Frank, turned pale. We had been

joking about the previous night's direct water-balloon hit on a fat

lady and her poodle. It was a stupid, dangerous act, but luckily

nobody got hurt. We were celebrating our escape from punishment when

the chaperone asked to see me.

"Clifton," she began, "do you know about the Mason-Dixon line?"

"No," I said, wondering what this had to do with drenching fat ladies.

"Before the Civil War," she explained, "the Mason-Dixon line was

originally the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania - the

dividing line between the slave and free states." Having escaped one

disaster, I could feel another brewing. I noticed that her eyes were

damp and her hands were shaking.

"Today," she continued, "the Mason-Dixon line is a kind of invisible

border between the North and the South. When you cross that invisible

line out of Washington, D.C., into Maryland, things change."

There was an ominous drift to this conversation, but I wasn't

following it. Why did she look and sound so nervous?

"Glen Echo Amusement Park is in Maryland," she said at last, "and the

management doesn't allow Negroes inside." She stared at me in silence.

I was still grinning and nodding when the meaning finally sank in.

"You mean I can't go to the park," I stuttered, "because I'm a Negro?"

She nodded slowly. "I'm sorry, Clifton," she said, taking my hand.

"You'll have to stay in the hotel tonight. Why don't you and I watch a

movie on television?"

I walked to the elevators feeling confusion, disbelief, anger and a deep

sadness. "What happened, Clifton?" Frank said when I got back to the

room. "Did the fat lady tell on us?"

Without saying a word, I walked over to my bed, lay down and cried.

Frank was stunned into silence. Junior-high boys didn't cry, at least

not in front of each other.

It wasn't just missing the class adventure that made me feel so sad.

For the first time in my life, I learned what it felt like to be a

"nigger."

Of course there was discrimination in the North, but the color of my

skin had never officially kept me out of a coffee shop, a church - or

an amusement park.

"Clifton," Frank whispered, "what is the matter?"

"They won't let me to go Glen Echo Park tonight," I sobbed.

"Because of the water balloon?" he asked.

"No, I answered, "because I'm a Negro."

"Well, that's a relief!" Frank said, and then he laughed, obviously

relieved to have escaped punishment for our caper with the balloons.

"I thought it was serious."

Wiping away the tears with my sleeve, I stared at him. "It is serious.

They don't let Negroes into the park. I can't go with you!" I shouted.

"That's pretty damn serious to me."

I was about to wipe the silly grin off Frank's face with a blow to his

jaw when I heard him say, "Then I won't go either."

For an instant we just froze. Then Frank grinned. I will never forget

that moment. Frank was just a kid. He wanted to go to that amusement

park as much as I did, but there was something even more important than

the class night out. Still, he didn't explain or expand.

The next thing I knew, the room was filled with kids listening to

Frank.

"They don't allow Negroes in the park," he said, "so I'm staying with

Clifton."

"Me, too," a second boy said.

"Those jerks," a third muttered. "I'm with you, Clifton." My heart

raced. Suddenly, I was not alone. A pint-sized revolution had been

born.

The "water-balloon brigade," 11 white boys from Long Island, had made

its decision: "We won't go." And as I sat on my bed in the center of

it all, I felt grateful. But, above all, I was filled with pride.

Dondre Green's story brought that childhood memory back to life. His

golfing teammates, like my childhood friends, faced an important

decision. If they stood by their friend it would cost them dearly. But

when it came time to decide, no one hesitated.

"Let's get out of here," one of them whispered.

"They just turned and walked toward the van," Dondre told us. "They

didn't debate it. And the younger players joined us without looking

back."

Dondre was astounded by the response of his friends - and the people

of Louisiana. The whole state was outraged and tried to make it right.

The Louisiana House of Representatives proclaimed a Dondre Green Day

and passed legislation permitting lawsuits for damages, attorneys'

fees and court costs against any private facility that invites a team,

then bars any member because of race.

As Dondre concluded, his eyes glistened with tears. "I love my coach and

my teammates for sticking by me," he said. "It goes to show that there

always good people who will not give in to bigotry. The kind of love

they showed me that day will conquer hatred every time."

My friends, too, had shown that kind of love. As we sat in the hotel,

a chaperone came in waving an envelope. "Boys!" he shouted. "I've just

bought 13 tickets to the Senators-Tigers game. Anybody want to go?"

The room erupted in cheers. Not one of us had ever been to a

professional baseball game in a real baseball park.

On the way to the stadium, we grew silent as our driver paused before

the Lincoln Memorial. For one long moment, I stared through the marble

pillars at Mr. Lincoln, bathed in that warm, yellow light. There was

still no smile and no sign of hope in his sad and tired eyes.

"...We here highly resolve...that this nation, under God, shall have a

new birth of freedom..."

In his words and in his life, Lincoln made it clear, that freedom is

not free. Every time the color of a person's skin keeps him out of an

amusement park or off a country-club fairway, the war for freedom

begins again. Sometimes the battle is fought with fists and guns, but

more often the most effective weapon is a simple act of love and

courage.

Whenever I hear those words from Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg, I

remember my 11 white friends, and I feel hope once again. I like to

imagine that when we paused that night at the foot of his great

monument, Mr. Lincoln smiled at last.

By Clifton Davis

from A 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul

___________________________________________________________________

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OBLIGATIONS AND OATHS

THE BUILDER FEBRUARY 1921

BY BRO. H.R. PARTLOW, ARKANSAS

THE MASONIC obligation has always been to the writer a subject of

considerable interest, especially on account of the various

positions assumed by the obliger at the time of taking the

obligation, and the formalities incident to it which, in my

opinion, bespeak for the obligation a greater antiquity than

usually accorded it by historians and writers.

Even a cursory view of the subject of entering into a contractual

relation from ancient times shows that the obligations assumed to

be binding were entered into in accordance to the ceremonial form

of that age, and if entered into in that way were considered by the

ancients inviolate.  History abounds with many instances evidencing

this, but for numerous cases we have only to go into the field of

religious and legal literature.  Biblical and judicial records are

the deposits left by the receding waters of time and an examination

of the laws and customs of these remote ages shows a general

unfolding and development of civilization. True it is that the data

found are not separately and clearly set forth, but may be compared

to the residue of the seashore, scattered and wholly without order,

some buried in sand and foreign matter, while others are entirely

concealed except to the keen vision of the delving student who by

patience and skill will exhume them, thereby revealing them to the

superficial observer.

The writer is fully aware that the average Mason has but little

interest in such matters, but a close study of the customs of the

ancients will shed much light upon certain customs now used in our

ritual or floor work in conferring degrees.  If by any means we can

determine the inception of these early formalities, the basal ideas

leading up to them, and the possible psychological functioning

which produced them they will, in my opinion, be invaluable. These

rudimentary ideas are to the Masonic student what the primary

crusts of the earth are to the geologist.  They contain all the

forms which society has subsequently exhibited.

In the matter of ascertaining the fountain head of the jural

conception of an oath, obligation, or contract, one may become lost

in the impenetrable night of antiquity.  Mr. Holmes, in his

admirable work on Common Law, says: "To explain how mankind first

learned to promise, we must go to metaphysics and find out how it

came to frame a future tense." Law, like religion, is co-eval with

intelligence and so soon as man was capable of continuity of

thought, so soon as he found intelligible speech, he questioned

himself concerning his relationship to other sentient beings. 

Therefore, by way of a premise, it may be said that whenever and

wherever we have found man we find exhibition of certain

characteristics which are common to other peoples in the same stage

of development.

The force and effect of an oath or obligation in ancient days was

much greater than it is today, for the reason that the Higher Power

was presumed to be present and to participate in the transaction as

a third party.  This was especially so in making of covenants which

were accompanied by a sacrifice and other solemn formalities in

addition to the oath calling upon the ever present Deity to

witness.

In the procedure of entering into obligations or of taking oaths

one is impressed first with the universal use of the light hand. It

is a singular coincidence that so many people are right handed, and

we shall now consider the use of the right hand in entering into

various obligations and draw some conclusions regarding its almost

universal use.

The right hand has been held forever sacred.  The origin of such

belief is a profound mystery.  Much importance was attached to it

in worship as well as in entering into various contractual

relations.

A study of the formal contract in early English law rewards the

student for the pains of his investigation; and for the purpose of

giving to the reader the benefit of this we quote at some length