While it is a generalization to conclude that the behavior of all immigrants followed a pattern of anonymity once they arrived in America, there is considerable evidence to support that claim as it apples to my ancestors, particularly those who came from Sicily. There are a number of possible scenarios which may explain this phenomenon. The essential quality of the peasant farmer’s life in Sicily was geared toward overcoming adversity so that he could eke out a living for his family. Land ownership was a marker which signified one was in a different and better social class. I don’t believe my grandfather enjoyed any such luxury although he and his family owned the house in which they lived when he left Sicily in 1906. Work was often drudgery and difficult to find if it existed at all. Men had to travel out into the country in search of work while their families remained behind and did what they could until the men returned. This migratory practice figured prominently in my grandfather’s life when he left Sicily and came to this country. A letter I found written in Italian from one of his friends while the family was living in Philadelphia indicated that many Italians including my grandfather–and probably his sons when they were old enough–commuted to South Jersey to work as a day laborers and field hands on one of the local farms. The processes involved in this migrant workforce was not unlike that which plays out in immigrant communities today, only the ethnicity of the laborers has changed. Another letter I have describes an incident in which my grandfather had been directed to pay a fee to a certain man, probably the American equivalent of the padrone in Sicily, for the work that he and his sons had been given. As a child, I do not recall my grandfather speaking English so it is all the more plausible that his ability to secure work depended on either employers who spoke Italian–and Sicilian dialects were not familiar to all Italians which made communication among fellow Italians difficult as well–or relied upon the skills of an interlocutor who could speak for him to an employer, for a fee, of course.

Another factor may have figured prominently in the relative secrecy which appears to have shrouded some of the family subsequent to their arrival in this country. I recall anecdotes from different sources that hinted that my grandfather wanted to distance himself from the mafia which was apparently active in his native Sicily particularly in Belmonte Mezzagno–his birthplace–and San Giuseppe Jato–my grandmother’s birthplace. My grandfather was also leery of similar influences lurking in the teeming streets of south Philadelphia during the first quarter of the 20th century. It is an eery coincidence that known mafiosi from Belmonte Mezzagno and San Giuseppe Jato share a few ancestral surnames: Spera, Martorana, for example. I can add two personal accounts from my childhood that contribute to the mafia mistique. Although my father isn’t Italian he seemed to be the designated driver who chauffeured my grandmother and other family members–as children we were brought along despite our protestations to do something more interesting–from South Jersey into south Philadelphia to visit family and relatives ranging from my grandmother’s mother to her brothers and sisters and their children. It happened on one of those trips to visit an aunt who lived in one of the multitude of row houses bunched together like a line of old men while young men gathered in noisy pockets to shoot craps on a nearby street corner. My cousin Tommy–I think everybody was a cousin back then, even if they weren’t–with his slick hair do, black and shiny, sitting regally behind the wheel of his car motions for us to come over and have a look. The interior of that automobile was fine; however, everything about that car would have dissolved with age had my cousin not exposed the contents of the special compartment he had built into the console of his car. As we leaned in through the rolled down windows for a closer look, Tommy opened that compartment with a flourish and revealed a cache of weapons, one of which I believe to this day was a Thompson submachine gun. One Sunday morning as she was reading the Philadelphia Bulletin my mother called out in surprise that one of her uncles was on the cover of the Parade section. When I asked her what she meant she pointed out a man in the photograph standing on a street corner in Philadelphia. The caption read that the photograph was taken as part of an investigation of organized crime activity and the man on the corner was arrested as a numbers runner. A fertile imagination might account for the speculative nature of these incidents had it not been for all the times we’d stop by a bootlegging operation in a large brick factory building in south Philadelphia to buy Dago Red in gallon jugs before we’d slip back to Jersey over the Ben Franklin Bridge were much too gritty only to be the rambling dreams that a tired kid has nestled in the backseat of an old sedan between his grandmom and his siblings.

With the uncertainty of iFamily’s future as an actively developed genealogy program becoming a greater possibility, I downloaded Reunion 9 as an option should I decide to make a change.  Reunion enjoys a large following of active and devoted users as well as being cited by many genealogists as the premier genealogy program for Mac.  The Reunion forums, at first glance, seem to be very active, responsive, and helpful both regarding the specifics of using Reunion and diverse topics involved in genealogy itself.  When technical issues need to be vetted the developers post on the forum as well.

While I am more than disappointed with the way progress on iFamily has unfolded, there are several reasons for not abandoning iFamily for Reunion 9 immediately.  I find iFamily’s interface more aesthetically pleasing to me than Reunion which may be attributed to the fact that I have used iFamily for a few years now.  I prefer iFamily’s generated HTML for web sites to the web cards that Reunion outputs.  I do find that Reunion’s documentation is a strength that iFamily would profit from if it were incorporated into its development regime, in fact, iFamily’s lack of adequate and readily available documentation is a glaring flaw despite the archived Q & A’s, and FAQ’s on its forum boards.  Price is another factor since Reunion 9 is three times as expensive as iFamily; however, if a program is no longer actively developed, the issue of price becomes moot.  I am not a seasoned genealogist so I found iFamily’s evolving nature to my own personal tastes; with Keith gone, that approach may no longer be possible or viable.

Reunion doesn’t offer limited GEDCOM file importing in its demo version which is very troubling as I would like to test the software with my own data rather than rely on the Royal Family or manually key in data.  I have discovered from Reunion’s various online forums that unlinked sources are not transferred into Reunion when a GEDCOM file is imported which has prompted me to recheck my iFamily data should I take the plunge and switch to Reunion 9.  Reunion has been around for a long time and its future as a Mac only genealogy program appears to be secure.  There is an old adage that a leopard cannot change its spots but I am willing to be patient for a little longer in hope that a snow leopard will–or at least until I can get a proper GEDCOM file prepared to export/import.

Perhaps it is unfair to assume that the best intentions cannot realistically be expected to translate into that which they intend.  Perhaps, but the development of iFamily has been stalled since Keith’s untimely passing and there are no tangible signs that development is ongoing, or, if it may ever be revived.  I had hoped that iFamily’s code base would be taken over by either another individual who was an avid genealogist or by a firm similarly committed to genealogy so that Keith’s efforts would continue to grow and flourish from the fertile foundation he had laid.  Unfortunately, in nearly nine months not one revision has been made to iFamily, not even the last revision Keith had scheduled for release around the end of October 2008.  I am not a software developer and I harbor no secret desire to become one although I had been a programmer for over 20 years (retired); however, there is an implicit professional mandate not to let a viable code base languish; it is not good for business and it certainly is not very considerate of customers who have purchased the product and spent long hours filling its database with genealogical data.  It would be kinder and wiser to announce the end of development for that software.  Situations arise when it becomes necessary to end product development; unfortunately, such casualties are not all uncommon in technology.

While I have hoped that I was mistaken and that my judgment was faulty, action or inaction seems to confirm my doubts.  On June 9 2009 I raised a query in the iFamily forum regarding Apple’s newest operating system, OS X 10.6, dubbed Snow Leopard, and compatibility issues, if any, with iFamily.  It was said that there were no expectations for any conflict or problems for iFamily running under Snow Leopard.  Sadly there are: iFamily does not run under SL.  Apparently, iFamily was never tested by the developer to confirm that it would or would not run under OS X 10.6.  The developers of Reunion 9 did test their software and issued a warning prior to the release of Snow Leopard so that the users would know in advance that upgrading the OS would cause Reunion to fail.  Meanwhile, they are working to release an upgrade to address the problems which they have identified.

My personal preference is to continue to use iFamily as my primary genealogy program and I am willing to be patient for the short term as long as there is a definite commitment made to the active development of iFamily and not long periods of inactivity and promises which go unmet.  One of the realities involving of computers is that operating systems will continue to improve and change.  Developers have an obligation to keep abreast of, and, in some cases, ahead of the sharp technology curve that these improvements promise if they want their products to remain viable.  I hope that coding issues with iFamily and Snow Leopard will be resolved in a reasonable time, on the other hand, I am beginning to take a closer look at Reunion 9 as it appears to have a solid user base and a track record for longevity–not a bad quality when one is involved with genealogy.

As the specter of drought inches closer, it is difficult not to cast about and recognize similar periods of inactivity or diminished productivity in other areas.  For nearly the last year I have been disengaged from genealogy research which I had pursued with such single-minded zeal that I became the bane of relatives who tired of my litany of questions and who cringed at the thought that my next breath was merely a brief interlude in preparation for another extended family anecdote.  Although the intensity of my genealogical research had ebbed from its former state, I continued to follow the activity on the various forums I had joined and posted whenever I could contribute meaningfully in the on-going discussions.

One forum that I found quite enjoyable was associated with the genealogy software I purchased to maintain the data that I collected as a result of my research.  In fact, I bought the software for a variety of reasons: quality, price, and, perhaps more importantly, the developer of the software was a man with a vision, had extensive experience in genealogy, displayed a passion for the subject of his software, and had the vitality to enter into a vigorous discussion with any and all of his clients.

Sadly, Keith Wilson died in November of 2008.  The software that he created is a notable memorial to his talent and passion for genealogy; however, the vision that he embraced and expressed in the software he wrote is now languishing, inching nearer to a similar fate–nearly nine months have transpired since the most recent version was released.  While the loss of any individual is an incomparable tragedy, watching the monument carved from Keith’s fertile imagination slowly deteriorate from inattention is still painful.

Keeping up with friends who are currently online is one feature that Facebook offers that is probably familiar to almost all of its users, particularly the younger ones who are already veterans of chat rooms.  The other day I noticed that my cousin from Italy was online so I dusted off my scant smattering of Italian and greeted her.  After a few brief exchanges my aspiration of becoming a polyglot was forfeit.  Fortunately, my cousin is able to speak English far better than I can utter my few phrases of Italian so that we were able to have a pleasant conversation.  A few days later we chanced to resolve the six hour time difference and chatted once again.  The encounters encouraged me to renew the promise that I had made to myself to learn to read Italian.  At my age mastery of the spoken word lies just beyond my reach therefore it is more sensible for me to focus my efforts on reading comprehension.  Without a robust community of Italian speakers with which to engage, mastering the nuances of conversation is very unlikely, if not impossible.  As daunting as it is to venture into the uncertain terrain of learning a foreign language, there is a certain allure in having the opportunity to practice with a native speaker who is inclined to be more supportive than critical.  My cousin, after all, è una della famiglia!

Yesterday was different in some ways while in other ways it underscored the problems I have encountered attempting to enlist my relatives’ aid in genealogy research.  I received an email from one of my cousins providing me with a link to another cousin’s Flickr account.  Among the photos I viewed I saw one that I had been told existed but had never seen before.  I was told just a couple of months ago by my aunt that she had a photo of my grandmother’s parents; however, she was remodeling her house at the time and had stored the photo so that she was unable to let me see it.  Of course, I expressed my desire to have a copy of the photo when she finished remodeling and retrieved the photograph from storage.  Unfortunately, my request was either ignored or simply forgotten; however, mixed in with a variety of photos covering a number of unrelated topics were a pictures of family members, including my mother, my aunts and uncles, me, and the prize, the photo of my great aunt Jennie, my great grandmother Anna Licata, and, my great grandfather Salvatore Monte, whose image I had never seen before.  Too bad the photo was rather poorly reproduced, scanned at such a low resolution that either enlarging or enhancing it was not very effective.  I have already sent several emails to relatives seeking to track down the cousin who uploaded the images to Flickr.  If past experence is a predictor of future behavior, the likelihood of my seeing the original photograph is probably nil.  With the option to work with the original photograph eliminated, I would be greatful if my cousin scanned the photo again at the highest possible resolution and sent me that file so that I can improve it as much as possible with photo imaging software.  The unexpected appearance of this particular photo lends credence to my speculation that there are more family photos and documents in my aunt’s possession, as well as other relatives, which, may contain more specific information about our ancestors, particularly the period of years in Philadelphia between 1906 and 1930; those 24 years are critical to uncovering the transition my grandmother and family and my grandfather made from Sicily to this country.  That period may also contain a key to unraveling the mysteries surrounding the families origins in Sicily: the surnames of Dragotto, Mazzola, Pizzo, Benigno, Spero, Monte, Licata, Lo Vecchio, Santangelo and the comunes of Belmonte Mezzagno and San Giuseppa Jato.

It’s not a box of chocolates but it is at least an enticing confection.

On the left is daughter Giovanna (Jennie) Monte, mother Anna (Licata) Monte seated, and father Salvatore Monte on the right.

About a year ago I went through a process of evaluating genealogy programs for Macs which I documented in a post at the time.  While I tended toward Reunion 9 because of its venerable status and reputation within the Mac community, its steep price tag forced me to consider alternatives before I made my choice.  Ultimately I opted for iFamily For Tiger, as it was known at the time.  The price was certainly right; however, the real selling point for me was the quirky, engaging personality of the developer, Keith Wilson.  iFamily was a shining example of Keith’s skill as a programmer; it was also a platform for his approach to and abiding interest in genealogy.  Because Keith was engaged in his own genealogical search he was an advocate for genealogy first and a programmer second; although, the product of his efforts or his ability to translate the needs of the genealogist into code were always first class.  Have a question about genealogy, iFamily; want a function, report, or chart added to the program; found a bug; just ask Keith.  In most instances the feature would be added almost as quickly as the request was made.  The lively interaction with Keith both on the user forum and through personal email was invigorating for iFamily users and responsible for its rapid, feature-rich development.

While activity on the forum seemed to lag noticeably, the change to a new host for the forum had not gone as well as Keith would have liked.  While the problems were being ironed out, as he frequently did, Keith notified registered users personally by email regarding the difficulties and instructions for rejoining the forum obtaining version updates–once one purchased iFamily all updates to the program were free, forever.  Nearly a month of inactivity preceded the shocking news delivered to registered iFamily users:  Keith died suddenly in November while on vacation.

Keith’s son, Warwick, has pledged to continue the work his father had begun.  While Warwick expressed both his intention to continue development of iFamily and competence as a professional programmer to achieve that end, the forum exchanges have almost disappeared and the last update which was prepared by Keith has still not been released.  The grief of losing one’s father is indescribable, the effect on one’s life is unimaginable so I presume that the jaunty wit, the devil-may-care attitude, the celebration of life that Keith exuded in almost every email, post, or response may be as painful to emulate as it is difficult to duplicate.  Keith’s incredible work ethic translated into an unbelievably robust genealogy program; however, I am certain he would be the first to admit that there was still much more development and refinement planned for iFamily.  While patience may be the apothecary’s potion for the present, time still flees, families reunite and their numbers may increase even as their generations fade away; I hope iFamily is not one of those disappearing generations.

To help satisfy my growing appetite for establishing creditable documentation, I joined a variety of online genealogy forums, subscribed to Ancestry, began visiting LDS Family History Centers regularly, and continued to make a nuisance of myself to any and all relatives who might have a shred of evidence to help me reconstruct the story of our family.  As luck would have it, one of my cousins had stashed away in a lock box a cache of letters written in Italian from my great uncle in Sicily to my grandfather in America spanning the years from 1932 to 1946 that provided an intimate albeit incomplete portrait of family history.  My mother insisted that my first language was Italian; she and I lived with my grandparents until I was two years old while my father was serving in the Pacific Theater on Okinawa courtesy of the US Army near the close of WWII.  Unfortunately whatever language facility my infant tongue possessed was lost shortly thereafter; no trace of its existence remain in the flickering images of my memory.  If I were to make sense of the correspondence between my grandfather and his brother, I would have to make good finally on the promise I made to myself when I entered college to learn Italian so that one day I could converse with my grandmother in her native tongue.  I did not learn Italian in college.  The truth is I did attempt to study Italian; however, the college I attended did not offer a course in Italian, nor did any of the four other colleges and universities nearby.  Armed with an Italian-English dictionary I had purchased in 1990 when my wife and I spent two weeks in Italy, I limped along at translating the three earlier documents I had.  The handwriting was as daunting as the language I was endeavoring to understand, and I soon realized that I was confronted with another obstacle, dialect: the Dragotto’s and the Monte’s from Belmonte Mezzagno were Sicilians and not Florentines–neither Dante nor modern Italian captured precisely the meaning contained in those epistles.

Online societies can be distractions, but properly chosen, they can be immeasurably beneficial.  Fortunately I chanced upon one of the best Italian genealogy sites online.  I submitted the letters page by page to the translators and waited each day with baited breath as the saga of two brothers separated by an ocean and a culture slowly, sadly, lovingly unfolded.  While my experiences in researching my ancestors traversed peaks and valleys, I was introduced to and accompanied by a community of people who were engaged in a similar journey; each of us, in the final analysis, is confronted with the task of finding meaning in everyday existence as Viktor Frankl suggested in Man’s Search For Meaning.

The patience and generosity extended to me by so many of those who participated in the forum were also people who valued the courage and spirit of their antecedents so I was surprised to find a comment that contained an implied racial innuendo which, stood out sharply from the many positive, congratulatory remarks regarding president elect Barack Obama’s victory.  I responded to the comment in a civil tone as the man who was being disparaged would.  The site moderator reminded forum members that any discourteous or disrespectful posts would be removed.  It was a genealogy site after all and not a political discussion group.  And then another comment followed.  As the commentary continued, a stream of cynicism bubbled up; faint echoes of the racial overtones that were once encoded in the old, all-too-familiar phrases that bludgeoned non-white America with Jim Crow laws or categorized immigrants as spic, wop, kike, chink, mic, or any other epithet designed to tear away one’s humanity and substitute in its stead a septic otherness:  Those of us who have engaged in tracing southern roots have likely encountered the slave schedules of 1850 and 1860 where human beings are listed under their white masters by age, sex, and color but not by name.

As the incoming administration has articulated its hope, vision, and plan for the nation, expectations have soared.  My fear is that we, as a nation and as individuals, will regard those expectations as exterior to ourselves, that we will not embrace the very responsibilities we demand of our leaders, that we will opt to watch one man fail while we fulminate over broken promises and false hope.  If those hopes and expectations were Barack Obama’s alone, we should not have elected him president; if we were so cynical that we’d rather debase ourselves by attributing our failure as his, then we deserve the consequences of our bigotry.  Forty-eight percent of the participating electorate apparently did not share Obama’s hope and certainly had much lower expectations.  The architecture of governance required to house this tenuous majority and this formidable minority can only be designed and constructed with tools of reason and the sweat equity earned through commitment to common values and respect for philosophical differences.  The precarious logic required to create such a synthesis may very well be outlined in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem Brahma.

Brahma

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

Small towns can be disarmingly quaint at first glance; unfortunately, that intoxicating  veneer of quaintness was quickly breached the moment I entered the the courthouse building and came face to face with a burly police officer stationed at a metal detector.  As I approached, armed with both a digital camera and a cell phone, the policeman informed me that I could not proceed outfitted as I was with my digital weaponry.  Parking space seems to be a common problem when it involves government buildings; small towns are no exception.  My wife had chosen to remain with the car while I dashed into the Archives Room in the courthouse on a preliminary reconnoitering mission.  I ran back to the car, handed my cell phone and camera to my wife for safe keeping, and promised her an explanation as soon as I returned.

Back in the courthouse and properly disarmed, I was received very differently; I was not only given directions to the room I sought but was taken there, rather cordially, by a man whom I assumed was a trustee and not a government employee as he wore a uniform which seemed to be typical of someone in such a position.  The Archives Room was located in the basement of the building, not quite a dim, dank chamber, it was illuminated with the bright white light from banks of florescent tubes.  Aside from some books, a few tables, a large copier flanked by metal filing cabinets, the place seemed empty.  I rang the bell atop the bar that restricted the authorized personnel from people like me who simply strolled in unannounced.  Shortly after the BING dissipated in the still air of the corridor shaped room, a pleasant young man greeted me with a quick apology for making me wait.  To expedite matters, I explained that I was on a tight schedule in addition to living several states away and was primarily interested in what information was available and specifically what was accessible online.

I was presented a form listing the type of records and indexes to those records for which the Archives Room was responsible.  While an index might be available in the Archives Room, copies of original records could only be obtained from the local governments or townships which housed those records.  As I was about to peruse an index to see what sort of information I might access, the young man offered to do a search on a name for me using the computer system at his disposal.  He explained the information on the computer system was not available to the general public and would be much faster than looking through the cataloged indexes on the shelf.  I gave him my grandfather’s name, my father’s father; my efforts at discovering more about him had not been very fruitful.  I had traced my grandfather on US Census in the state of New Jersey beginning in 1910 and ending in 1930, found his 1942 draft registration card, and had a hunch that the 1903 passenger listing–both English and German documents–a young man named Georg Braun was a reference to my grandfather.  Since I had just visited the cemetery where he was interred and photographed his tombstone, it seemed appropriate to do a search using his name.

In short order the computer system returned a number of hits corresponding to the name I had given the clerk.  Not all of the items returned by the search were relevant; however, three references yielded new information about my grandfather (the town where he was born) and corroborated some of the data I had accumulated.  In little more than an half hour I had in hand three copies of original documents:  two Declarations of Intention and a Petition for Naturalization.  The documents were filed in the county and were, therefore, stored on site.  My grandfather stated in these petitions that he was born in Blumendorf, Prussia, Germany on November 23rd 1883; that he emigrated to the US from Hamburg, Germany on the vessel First Monarchy; that he arrived at the port of New York around June 5th 1903.  The passenger list that I found containing my grandfather’s name is consistent with the information he provided with the exception of the ship’s name: the vessel noted is the Moltke and not the First Monarch.  There is another oddity: the town of origin is listed as Strelno and not Blumendorf.  Faced with these inconsistencies I was able to resolve one with additional research.  Blumendorf is the town while Strelno represents the German equivalent of our designation for County.  Prussia corresponds to State and Germany obviously is Country.  Nevertheless, my characterization unnecessarily oversimplifies the historical complexity involved in the occupation and political divisions of this area; I anticipate the search for original records will belie that false notion of simplicity.

By returning to the census information that I had compiled about my grandfather, I was able to retrieve additional corroborating data by reviewing neighbors on surrounding pages of the enumeration district where my grandfather was listed.  The two witnesses who signed my grandfather’s Petition for Naturalization were neighboring farmers.  I recognized one of the names as a surname of one of my high school classmates!  Another name leaped out at me as the man who owned the farm where my grandfather was working when he died; it was retrieved from one of those forgotten snipets of memory that was inexplicably stored away in the mind of a six year old who was present when the traumatic news of his grandfather’s death was delivered to his grandmother.

Preliminary investigation indicates that records for Blumendorf have been committed to microfilm and are available for rental from one of the Family History Centers maintained by the Church of the Latter Day Saints.  I studied German for a couple of semesters when I was in college; however, whatever facility I had then was forgotten long ago.  Past experience with foreign language records has taught me that there is much more involved in accurate translations than fluency in the language although it certainly helps; the role that dialects and handwriting play should not be overlooked.  Help from  community of genealogists, professional and amateur, is invaluable. I have been spoiled by the generous support from members on the Italian genealogy site, Gente di Mare; and, hopefully, the online German genealogy community will be as cooperative and resourceful should I need help with translating documents.

I have always assumed that my Sicilian grandparents were illiterate.  My grandfather never spoke a word in English the entire time I knew him; his utterances spilled out in bursts, sometimes in anger or frustration, many times in mirth and joy, but he always had a way of charming us grandchildren; somehow we understood him if we didn’t understand what he said.  Often, in the background, stood my grandmother, chattering to my grandfather in Italian, and translating, at least one side of the exchange for us into broken English.  I do know that my grandparents’ dialect of Sicilian was incomprehensible to other Italians; one aunt whose family was from central Italy, near Valle San Giovanni often complained she couldn’t understand a word my grandmother said.  During one of her recent illuminations, my mother told me that my grandparents could write; her mother had better penmanship, she said, and wrote prolifically; whereas, my grandfather’s writing was more child-like, unpolished; and, as he grew older his hands shook so much that writing was difficult, if not impossible for him.

As I attempt to assay the veracity of this latest revelation provided by my mother’s musing, I am still confronted with a more convoluted conundrum:  how dependable is my mother’s memory when she eases into her lucid recollections; the evidence that she destroyed, were it preserved, might authenticate her assertions or repudiate the life she recalls.  What is even more troublesome is how oblivious I was as a child to the destructive acculturation that was denuding our family’s cultural heritage, the unfulfilled quid pro quo, ostensibly the surrender of old world culture in exchange for the new–an uncluttered American Ideal and its value system–that has never really existed, in deed, and certainly, not equally for all citizens.