LEWISTON – Leonard Pitts Jr. got 30,000 e-mails in response to a column he wrote after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The column referred to the tragic day as the type of event that would put “the family’s bickering on hold.”

By family, he meant America.

Many of the e-mails that Pitts received about his column started in a similar way.

“Mr. Pitts, I am not black, but …”

“Mr. Pitts, I am a lot older than you, but …”

“Mr. Pitts, I am politically conservative, but …”

“Mr. Pitts, I am a woman not a man, but …”

The writers went on to explain that despite the core differences they had with Pitts, they related to his words, they agreed with his point of view, they considered him a fellow American.

None of the differences mattered anymore, Pitts’ readers told him.

“For many,” Pitts said, “it was the first time they considered me their kin.”

A Pulitzer-winning journalist for the Miami Herald whose columns appear regularly in the Sun Journal, Pitts told the story about his Sept. 11 column to a sold-out crowd at Thursday’s Great Falls Forum.

The title of his speech – the first in the history of the Great Falls Forum for which people made reservations eight months in advance – was “Choosing Sides.” It was also the first time that an additional session of the forum was scheduled. He spoke in that special session at Bates College Chapel on Wednesday night.

A tall man with a deep voice, Pitts told the more than 125 people in the audience at St. Mary’s Lepage Conference Center that he wished the events of Sept. 11 had been enough to put an end to the bickering for good.

But he always knew that no “great watershed” would be crossed.

After all, he said, it wasn’t the first time that Americans were yanked out of their personal concerns and joined together by tragedy and grief.

It happened in 1929 when the stock market crashed. It happened again in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Then it happened three more times in 1963 and 1968 with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

“The point is,” Pitts said, “we are cursed with short memories.”

In time, Pitts watched as people went back to choosing sides based on their gender, their sex, their religious affiliation, their sexual orientation, the size of their bank accounts.

In time, people went back to seeing him as only a member of the black team, Pitts said.

He wants people to see him as more.

Things unite us, too

“Race is often the difference that trumps all,” he said. “But, if there are 10 things that divide us, maybe there are 100 that unite us.”

He told the audience that he’s also on the man team, the husband team, the dad team, the Christian team.

“I’m on the never-miss-an-episode-of-the-Sopranos team,” he said. “I’m on the I’m-losing-my-hair team.”

Pitts believes it would be better if people could join together based on what they love and believe, rather than what separates them from everyone else. Coming together isn’t the hard part, he reminded the crowd. It’s learning how to be together, how to stay together, he said.

Pitts isn’t waiting for another Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. to come along and inspire people to take that vital step. The movement, he said, has to take place in people’s homes.

“We need to teach our children not so much to memorize, but to think,” he said.

After his speech at Bates College Wednesday night, a 16-year-old girl came up to him and told him that she wanted to make the world a better place, but she didn’t know how to do it on her own.

Pitts responded with one of his favorite jokes: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

The bickering will stop for good, Pitts said, when people “step out of their comfort zones” and unite with teams that demand service and sacrifice, teams that include the oppressed and the victimized.

“My hope is that someday someone will be able to look at a man like me and wonder what all of the fighting was about: Didn’t we realize we were on the same team all along?'”

[email protected]