My very best friend ever was named Jimmy. I loved Jimmy like a brother. I loved him not because he was black, not in spite of the fact that he was black, but for the simplest and purest of reasons, at least to an 11-year-old boy: Jimmy and I shared a love of baseball.

I was in absolute awe of Jimmy’s talents and abilities. Of course, as an 11-year-old boy having grown up in very white Lewiston, Maine, I had only a vague idea of the brutal treatment Jimmy’s ancestors had endured when they were brought to America in chains. I also had only a vague idea of the discrimination that African-Americans had endured since emancipation.

As I got older and began to expand my horizons beyond the very insular surroundings of my hometown, I slowly became more and more aware of my beloved country’s shameful history of brutality and discrimination. When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, I was overcome with an anger and a sadness akin to that which I felt when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

On Jan. 19, as I watched Barack Obama take the oath of office as the 44th president – the nation’s first African-American president – I couldn’t help but imagine Dr. King standing next to this remarkable young man and thinking that his dream had finally come true; and I was never more proud to be an American.

Dan Fournier, Wales