A visitor to Washington, D.C. who takes an evening stroll across Capitol
Hill cannot help but be struck by the magnificence of this pinnacle of power
in our nation and the world. An evening's stroll is best--preferably in mid-
August if one wishes to trade the possibility of oppressive, muggy weather
for the likelihood that the hordes of tourists who flock to our nation's capi-
tal will be at a minimum and, in late evening, reduced to a handful. I travel
to Washington, D.C. frequently and have done so for the past several dec-
ades; I have yet to do so without a sense of awe at my first glimpse of the
massive marble structures that grace this lovely city. They can be appreci-
ated fully only by walking--past the towering facade of the Supreme
Court, down the block to the elegant Library of Congress, diagonally across
to the grandeur of the Capitol itself, flanked by the endless series of steps,
gardens, cascading fountains and pools, then along the Mall to the three
great presidential monuments at its opposite end. It is enough to make a pa-
triot out of the most cynical of observers.

Love of one's country, for nearly every citizen of any nation, is one of the
assumed virtues that most people take for granted. For those considered
"minorities," however, patriotism is a mixed emotion. It is especially mixed
for many Black Americans, whose historical roots in the United States are
deeper than those of a major portion of the white populace, which traces its
ancestry to the great waves of European and Mediterranean basin immi-
grants who flocked to these shores in the late nineteenth and early decades
of the twentieth centuries. It is mixed because Black Americans have
watched the second and third generations of these immigrant families en-

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