Donald Byers

We make -- it’s just progress has been made, but there’s still more to be done.  Well, I can see great difference from the time that I was in -- going to high school and now, I can see the difference, I mean a big difference.  But right now, right now as we speak, I feel like we are regressing, regressing right now, and that’s bad because we -- we’ve made quite a few steps forward.  And now, it seems like we’re going right back to -- into some of the things that we just get -- that we got out of, and that that’s not good.  I belong to a group we call One Heart, and it’s made up of six people, three from my church, three, and three from a white church right up the road from us.  I go to Covesville Baptist Church, First Baptist Cove-- I go to that church, and there’s a white church right up the road from us.  We formed a group called One Heart, and we meet -- try to meet at least once a month, so...  And we talk about everything, all, racial, what’s going on in the world, racially like.  We read -- do a lot of reading on stuff like slavery, we read about reparations, we discuss all of this stuff at meetings.  It’s just very, very interesting, and we learn a lot about each other.  We have become very, very close, and we encourage other people in the -- both churches to start getting groups together like that because you learn, you learn a lot.  And people don’t know, but it can make a lot of difference.  We even write letters to our congressmen concerning issues that we want done, so...  I’m very excited about that also.