A Change Gonna Come

<p>There is a ledger in the North Carolina State Archives. Bound in leather. Column after column of names. It is titled <em>Johnston County Permanent Registration of Voters, 1902 to 1908.</em></p><p>Every name in it is white. That was the point.</p><p>Smith Brooks had sat on the Smithfield Board of Commissioners. Mack Sowell would sit on the Selma Town Council. Between them: ninety-two years. Two names. And everything Johnston County built to keep those names from being closer together.</p><p>This is <em>A Change Is Gonna Come.</em></p><p></p>