Great gearshifts of history like Barack Obama's election to the US presidency throw up some interesting fragments, half-forgotten memories which suddenly acquire new significance in the light of current events.
Here's a fascinating example of the yellow newspaper cutting variety, sent to the Guardian this week by Jeremy Gunawardena, whose email address suggests he is an academic or administrator at Harvard.
He writes: "In the light of the excitement provoked by the presidential election in the USA, I wonder if you would be interested in re-publishing the article below from the Manchester Guardian of 50 years ago.
"It was written by my father, Charles Gunawardena (sometimes spelled Gunawardene, as below), who was then news editor of the Ceylon Daily News and an International Press Institute Fellow in the USA.
"My father would not have expected, on the basis of his reports from 1958, the complexion of the current US presidential race. I thought your readers might appreciate a voice from the past showing how much, in certain respects, the United States has changed.
"I transcribed this from an old xerox copy of the Manchester Guardian Weekly, June 12 1958."
Using Gunawardena's transcription the Guardian's researchers had no difficulty in tracing the original article in the digital archive.
Here it is, presenting what is in many ways a more nuanced and complex picture of race relations in the 1950s – both in the segregated American south and in Britain.
As an educated foreigner ("you are like us") the journalist is treated more courteously by whites than was usually the case for non-white locals, including educated ones. But the now-familiar sense of hurt is all too evident.
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