When was 'again?' Was it back when I was drinking from a separate

“When was ‘again’? Was it back when I was drinking from a separate water fountain? Was it when I couldn’t eat in that restaurant over there?... ‘Make America Great Again’ – before I had equality?” — Thus spoke Daryl Davis, the blues musician and civil rights activist whose courage transcended anger, and whose wisdom pierced through illusion. His question is not a jest nor a protest alone — it is a mirror held to a nation’s memory. In these words, Davis does not merely challenge a slogan; he exposes the weight of history, the cost of freedom, and the deep ache of those who remember what “greatness” once meant for some, but not for all.

To understand the meaning of this quote, one must know that Daryl Davis is not a man of division, but of reconciliation. He is known for befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan, for speaking to hatred with patience, and for transforming enemies into allies through conversation rather than condemnation. Yet here, he asks the most piercing of questions — “When was again?” — forcing us to confront the nostalgia that often blinds societies. His words unmask the sentiment behind the phrase “Make America Great Again,” asking: great for whom? For those whose rights were denied, whose voices were silenced, and whose dignity was crushed beneath systems of segregation, that “greatness” was no paradise, but a prison.

The origin of these words lies in America’s long, uneven journey toward equality. In the mid-twentieth century, Daryl Davis — a Black man born in the Jim Crow era — would have been barred from many spaces of public life. There were separate water fountains, segregated schools, and restaurants that would not serve him. To such a person, the idea of returning to a past “golden age” is not one of pride, but of pain. His question, then, is not only historical but moral: how can a society long divided by race and injustice call its former condition “great”? His challenge reminds us that nostalgia often polishes over cruelty, and that memory can be selective in service of comfort.

This struggle — between memory and truth — is not confined to America alone. In every nation, there are those who yearn for an imagined past of purity or strength, forgetting the suffering that such eras concealed. Consider the words of Frederick Douglass, who in 1852 asked, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” Like Davis, Douglass unmasked hypocrisy with humility, pointing out that freedom proclaimed by the powerful meant little to those still in chains. Both men, separated by a century, speak with the same prophetic voice: that true greatness cannot exist while inequality endures.

The ancient philosophers, too, warned against false nostalgia. The Greek historian Thucydides wrote that nations often destroy themselves not by outside enemies, but by the corruption of their own memory — by idolizing their past while ignoring their present injustice. Daryl Davis’s question, “When was again?” is the modern echo of that ancient warning. It asks us to discern between heritage and myth, between the pride that uplifts and the pride that blinds. For a nation to be truly “great,” it must face its past not with denial, but with courage — acknowledging both its triumphs and its sins.

Yet Davis’s wisdom lies not only in criticism, but in hope. He does not reject America, nor condemn those who speak of greatness; instead, he calls them to redefine it. He teaches that greatness must be measured not by dominance, but by compassion; not by the might of power, but by the breadth of justice. When he speaks of equality, he speaks of the dream that once stirred Martin Luther King Jr. — that a nation’s true strength is found not in its wealth or its armies, but in its capacity to see every human being as sacred.

So, O listener, take these words to heart. Do not be deceived by slogans or by the shimmer of an idealized past. Ask, as Davis did, “When was again?” — and seek instead the “now” that can be made just and kind. Let your greatness be defined not by what once was, but by what can still be created. Speak truth, even when it wounds; pursue understanding, even when it humbles. For only when justice, liberty, and equality are shared by all can any nation, any people, truly claim the title of “great.”

Thus, let the wisdom of Daryl Davis endure as a torch for all generations: greatness that excludes is not greatness at all. The fountain that quenches one man’s thirst while denying another’s is no symbol of freedom — it is the shadow of bondage. Let us, then, build not an “again,” but an ever onward — a greatness that rises from understanding, and a unity born not of forgetting, but of forgiveness.