The message this morning is based on the movie some of you saw on Thursday evening, "Driving Miss Daisy." The setting of the movie is the Atlanta, Georgia area in 1948 just before the civil rights movement. There are basically three main characters in the story, Daisy Wertham, a fine, rich, sharp-tongued Jewish widow of seventy two, Hoke Coburn, a black man, probably about 55 or 60, and Miss Daisy's son Boolie Wertham. It is a very interesting and entertaining movie with a sort of melancholy ending.
             The story begins with Miss daisy crashing her car when she backed out of her garage. Shortly after that Hoke shows up at Boolie's plant looking for a job. As he gets to the plant, an elevator is stuck and Hoke tells them how to fix it. Boolie needs to get his mother a chauffer. Hoke gets to job, but Daisy is a fiercely independent lady and refuses to be driven by Hoke and so she walks – for 6 days. Hoke follows her in the car every day as she goes to the store. Finally, one day, about half-way to Piggly Wiggly she gets in the car and allows Hoke to take her to the store. As soon as she goes in the store Hoke calls Boolie and tells him the good news and then adds that it only took 6 days the same time it took God to create the world!
             The story covers a period of twenty years and over those years, Hoke slowly wins Daisy's confidence. What many people probably miss in this movie, which by the way was originally a stage play, is the gentle poke at racism which takes two forms. The first is the discrimination faced by black people but also the prejudice of black people. For example, Hoke represented the stereotype of chauffer being a black man. But at the same time exhibits a certain amount of prejudice. Hoke is being wooed away from Boolie's employ but Hoke assures Boolie that he "ain't goin' workin' for some trashy somethin' like her" referring to a woman from Ohio, thus i...