Consider a sequence of events leading up to this Thanksgiving week, and wonder at the genius of America. On November 16, Condoleezza Rice was nominated to be the nation’s next secretary of state. November 17 would have been the 53rd birthday of her childhood friend Denise McNair, who was murdered along with three other girls in the infamous 1963 church bombing that scarred their hometown of Birmingham, Ala. On November 18, Bobby Frank Cherry died in prison, where he had been serving a life sentence for those murders.

Before Cherry’s death, he was perhaps painfully aware of his failure to stop the progress of history. Held in contempt by the society he sought to “defend” from integration, Cherry saw the 21st century began with not one but two African-American secretaries of state. One of the same local children he targeted and slaughtered because of the color of their skin is now our nation’s proud face to the world.

We have come far in the 41 years since 1963, when our country saw Martin Luther King arrested in Birmingham and then give his “I Have A Dream Speech” at the Lincoln Memorial; when Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway and then President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas. The road has often been rough, but one of the pleasantly surprising aspects of the intervening decades has been the way the greatest advances have happened almost quietly, a natural product of hard-won but still steady progress; the triumph of evolution over revolution. This is something to be thankful for.

President Bush’s second term carries with it many opportunities and responsibilities, but one he seems determined to work toward is the diversification of the Republican Party. This is a welcome return to the themes of his 2000 campaign, when he made diversity one of the cornerstones of his compassionate conservative philosophy while admitting that “there’s no escaping the reality that the Party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln.”

Indeed, the realignment of the South toward the Republican Party occurred only after Democrats passed civil rights legislation in 1964 and voting rights legislation in 1965, which prompted President Lyndon Johnson to murmur to his press secretary, Bill Moyers, “I just gave the South to the Republicans for your lifetime and mine.” This has come to pass: the now well-known red and blue state divisions unfortunately but undeniably build off suspect roots.

President Clinton famously promised to appoint a Cabinet that “looks like America.” President Bush has been less explicit about this goal, but also more effective at achieving it at the highest ranks. The “firsts” in his cabinet range not only from the first African-American male and African-American female secretary of state, but also the first female Asian-American Cabinet member, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, and the first Hispanic attorney general, the newly appointed Alberto Gonzalez. Combined with speculation that the president may tap Clarence Thomas to serve as chief justice when Justice Rehnquist retires and appoint the nation’s first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, a decidedly diverse portrait of the GOP emerges that justifies the significant gains Mr. Bush made among African-American and Hispanic-American voters in the 2004 elections.

What is missing so far, however, is the concurrent news-cycle trumpeting this administration’s historic inclusiveness. Some liberals still steadfastly deny the legitimacy of minority leaders when they do not share traditionally liberal beliefs, but they are loathe to loudly criticize lest they be labeled racist. Conservative commentators, who might have carped about the conscious diversity of Mr. Bush’s Cabinet picks had he been a Democrat, have instead offered full-throated support. The result is an almost seamless evolution, without controversy, and consequently without much comment.

But there is certainly reason for celebration. Because in the rise of Condoleezza Rice, America has a new example that can help inspire and further unify our country. Her family’s response to organized discrimination and homegrown terrorism was not to give in to a reactive cycle but to transcend it all through a determined course of self-improvement without the benefit of initial support from society at large. Hers is an American success story even more than an African-American success story. Murderous thugs like Cherry built their world-view on a vision of indelible difference – that’s how he could brag for years about getting away with a bombing where the clothes of four little girls were torn apart while their riddled bodies remained huddled together. In his final days, perhaps Cherry was aware of the futility of hate and the inability of evil to permanently overwhelm the power of hope. As we throw dirt on his corpse, let us say a prayer for Denise McNair and her family, and then turn our eyes to the television screen as we watch the American dream persist in the form of Condoleezza Rice still rising, a perfect example of America to ourselves and the world, reason alone for renewed Thanksgiving.

jpavlon@nysun.com