My four younger siblings and I have been taking turns caring for our 90-year-old dad, who is in home hospice.  After checking on Dad sleeping in his bedroom, I visited Dad's office in the basement.  Hung on the walls are numerous citations from governors and mayors, pastoral awards, and service awards from civic organizations that tell the extraordinary tale of Dr. Rev. Lloyd E. Marcus's life.

In 1952, Dad was among the first handful of blacks to become Baltimore City firefighters.  Despite humiliating racist working conditions, Dad won "Firefighter of the Year" two times.  He was Baltimore's first black paramedic and first black Fire Department chaplain.  Dad achieved numerous firsts for blacks.  I began to understand and feel at peace about dad saying he is ready to go home to Jesus.  Dad's work on Earth is done.

Most enlightening was seeing Dad's office walls plastered with pictures and laminated newspaper clippings chronicling achievements of his five kids and grandkids.  Two articles were about my baby brother winning two awards as a Maryland police officer – a photo of my daughter, Dad's granddaughter, becoming an officer in the Navy – an article about a grandson who is 37 scoring a game-winning touchdown when he was 10 years old.  Clearly, Dad is extremely proud of his offspring.  I pray and believe that Dad's legacy will live on via his kids and grandkids.

Practically every room in Dad's home features pictures of Jesus and civil rights icons: MLK, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, and numerous portraits of Obama.  No matter how hard I tried to explain to Dad that Obama put implementing leftists' agenda above helping blacks, Dad loves Obama.  I guess it is a generational black thing.

My mom passed away 25 years ago.  My sister recently told me that she once excitedly took Mom to see the home she and her husband had purchased in a new community.  Driving into the community, Mom saw a sign: "No Thru Access."  Mom panicked and demanded to be taken home immediately.  Mom feared that my sister's family would be trapped if her white neighbors decided to attack.  Mom's fear sounded absurd to my sister and me.  But it gave us an insight into the racial trauma many blacks experienced back in the day.  Thus, I can understand the emotional ties to Obama – the first black president – among blacks of Dad's generation.  Dad did vote for Trump.

Like the Virginia Slims cigarette slogan, America has "come a long way, baby" in race relations since Dad's day.  There is something extremely evil about fake news media, Hollywood, and the Democrats relentlessly deceiving American blacks into believing that little has changed racially since the 1950s.  Democrats tell black parents to send their kids to school wearing bulletproof vests to protect them from racist cops.  Democrats teach students that whites are born racist and labor 24-7 conceiving of ways to undermine black progress.  Black Millennials believing leftists' lies is as absurd as my mom's fear of a mob of white neighbors attacking my sister.

It is extremely disrespectful to my dad and other black civil rights pioneers for Democrats to promote the lie that their hard work, suffering, and sacrifices produced little change in race relations and opportunities for blacks in America.

Democrats have abandoned the mission of Dad's generation of black civil rights pioneers for an America of brotherhood and equal rights for all.

When I was a kid, Dad took me to the 1963 March on Washington.  We heard Dr. King say:

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.  They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.  We cannot walk alone.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

The crowd of 250,000 erupted in thunderous applause.  Clearly, Dr. King and his followers dreamed of racial unity.  Today, leftists have transformed Dr. King's movement into demonizing whites while instigating racial division, hate, and revenge.  Democrats have so overtaken and twisted Dr. King's movement that blacks who do not resent whites or hate America are trashed by Democrats; Kanye West, Candace Owens, Dr. Ben Carson, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Herman Cain, to name a few.  Democrats are obsessed with punishing white Americans.

Dr. King also said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Old blacks say you had to have your act together to march with Dr. King: clean, sober, and well behaved.  Democrats have thrown character out the window regarding blacks.  Everywhere you turn, Democrats seek to lower the bar for blacks.  Obama's PROMISE program blocked reporting crimes by blacks in schools.  Despite needing a driver's license for numerous transactions, Democrats say it is racist to require blacks to show a photo ID to vote.  Democrat teachers lobby for black students to be allowed to speak Ebonics, claiming that English is too challenging for blacks.  Forty years of Democrats lowering the educational, moral, and cultural bars for blacks has resulted in 70% of black kids growing up in fatherless households.  Poverty is a whopping 37% in black families headed by a single female.

It is evil the way Democrats continue to undermine Dad's and other civil rights heroes' achievements.  To further their lie that America will always be a racist hellhole for blacks, Democrats have falsely branded Trump a racist in the minds of many blacks.  The truth is that Trump is the best thing for blacks since sliced bread.  Black unemployment is at an all-time low. 

America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to go for it!

Regardless of Democrat lies, Dad and his generation of civil rights pioneers transformed America, paving the way for blacks to enjoy extraordinary success today.  For that, I am extremely grateful and say thank you.

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Help Lloyd spread the Truth
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