HEAVY BREATHING: WAITING TO EXHALE

I'M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THE 1950S, WHEN BLACKS were so rarely on television that the mere sight of one was enough to produce pandemonium in our Washington neighborhood. "Colored on TV," someone would shout from the front porch, and all normal activity ceased as everybody within earshot rushed to the nearest set for a moment of electronic racial solidarity. If somehow you missed the event, you felt seriously deprived. At a time when the civil rights movement was just beginning, seeing blacks on the tube made us feel more like a part of America. We wanted them to be there...