I attended the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and joined the first fraternity to mix Jews, blacks and whites. That was a time when the regular four-year liberal arts and sciences program was not open to women. It was a time when an anti-racist friend of mine found this triumphant but anonymous note on his dorm room door the day after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated: “Martin Luther Coon is dead.”

Now it is considered one of the outstanding institutions of higher learning in the South and anywhere else. My nephew and niece, whose mother is a native of Rwanda in Africa, both graduated from UVa with high honors.

That is just one example of the arc of historical progress over five decades. That is America, and no profoundly depressing absence of moral leadership at the top can trump that.

Dave Griffiths, Mechanic Falls