It was in Tuskegee that I was trying to register to vote. When we tried to find out where we could go, they wouldn't tell us. We sent a guy from the (VA) hospital who could pass for white. He found out what floor and what room (in the courthouse) we could register in, and this is the way we got to the courthouse. When the word spread, folks . . . came down immediately.
Recalling that experience, Mrs. Ballard says, quite sincerely, that the election of Barack Obama gives me a lot of encouragement about our country - and it's not a platitude.
Caroline Satchell of Potomac and Janice Morris, of Arlington, Va., know intimately the benefits of listening. They're twins and big fans of public radio, where some StoryCorps interviews are aired. They participated in a listening session as a gift to their children. Says Mrs. Satchell: I'm one of these people who believes there may be 20 different stories in the world, but there are hundreds of thousands of versions ... somebody new telling the story, that's what makes it meaningful to people. It's what helps us connect to each other as human beings. It's not the story itself but how people lived them.
