This ebony-and-ivory sisterhood focuses on similarities

Exhilarating performances by Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton set the stage for Barack Obama to accept the Democratic Party's presidential nomination tonight on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

"Another black woman and another white woman," says Lim DePriest, a black woman, as she sits in her Arlington Heights living room with her friend, Joyce Elizabeth Norman, a white woman with blond hair who lives in Hoffman Estates.

The two women, both in their 60s, became friends in 2003 as Norman was approaching the end of her long teaching career at Buffalo Grove High School, and DePriest, who had retired from the corporate world, was beginning her new life as a substitute teacher at the predominantly white school.

"She's got that laugh you never forget. Laugh for him," DePriest tells Norman, who erupts into laughter at her friend's boldness.

"We both like to laugh," Norman says, fueling a responding chuckle from DePriest.

Their laughs gave them a connection. Their histories cemented that bond of sisterhood.

"Boy, when we started talking about our lives, that sealed it," DePriest says.

"We found out we had so many similarities," Norman says.

"I grew up in a foreign country called Mississippi," says DePriest, who spent her childhood as the oldest of eight kids on the minority side of the railroad tracks in the delta town of Cleveland, where she made money as a kid in the 1950s by picking cotton. "I grew up in the Jim Crow South."

At the other end of the Mississippi River, Joyce Elizabeth Norman, one of seven kids, grew up working on the family farm outside the all-white hamlet of Lake Crystal, Minn. Life "was a mixture of lakes, corn, snow, chickens and polite white people," recalls Norman, who made money outside of her chores by "walking bean fields" to rid them of weeds.

Each woman did some modeling in the 1960s. Each has one son. Each is on her third marriage. When they heard Barack Obama's speech about race on March 18 and his acknowledgment about our differences, similarities and the common bond of hope, DePriest and Norman took action.

Not only did they go together to Gary, Ind., to register voters, they told their own story by writing a book. In "Growing Up Ebony & Ivory: A conversation between two women" (published by AuthorHouse and available at bookstores, online and through www.growingupebonyandivory.com), they talk about racism, love, marriage, laughter, diversity, the politics that divide us and the hopes and dreams that unite us.

DePriest, whose first name of Lim comes from her Chinese grandmother, had to deal with racism as a child in a nation that made her use different water fountains or sit in the balcony of the movie theater. While teaching from the book "Huckleberry Finn," Norman brought DePriest into her class to tell firsthand stories about the N word and race.

Tonight, the two women will sit in their comfy suburban homes and watch Obama accept his party's nomination for the highest office in the land.

"You've got a young man of color - black and white - coming in," DePriest says. "Why does he have to be labeled?"

While we do often rush to label issues in black and white instead of realizing all the gray, this Aug. 28th could be as monumental as the one King made famous in 1963.

"It's very historical. It's exciting," Norman says about tonight. "I think it's great. I think it's very positive."

Racism won't end tonight, the female friends agree. But Obama's nomination is one giant step forward in Americans' ongoing conversation about race. A conversation these two friends have been having for years.