The Hug Felt ‘Round the City : Before we can begin healing, we need to learn to judge one another as individuals rather than as political symbols.

Many Americans have a mental photo album of this country’s recent history. Although we may forget who took them, we are quite clear on what the images show and mean. Flipping the pages of memory will reveal pictures of who and what we were, and perhaps, what we are becoming, or have the potential to become. Much of our postwar history has been a slide show of riveting photos that have become universally recognizable:

* John Kennedy addressing a frozen, but thrilled, throng on the steps of the Capitol, his words steaming before him, his finger pointing in challenge.

* Martin Luther King Jr. at the feet of Daniel Chester French’s superb statue of Abraham Lincoln, as he delivers his “I Have A Dream” speech.

* The funerals of Jack and Bobby Kennedy and King. The reversed, empty boots in Blackjack’s stirrups as J.F.K.’s funeral caisson wound slowly through the grieving crowds. His brother’s funeral train being saluted by mourners as it carries its sad cargo to the Capitol. Coretta Scott King comforting two of her small children as a solitary tear glints through her heavy widow’s veil.

* A haggard Richard Nixon bidding goodby to his weeping White House staff, as his family stands by in agonized support.

* Reagan press secretary James Brady lying crumpled and bloody from the bullet intended for his boss, as angry Secret Service men attend to him and desperately scan the rooftops nearby.

* The turquoise-clad figure of Anita Hill, palm raised, as she is sworn in to give testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Clarence Thomas, bitterly admonishing the same sheepish panel that his confirmation hearings had been “an electronic lynching.”

* Los Angeles erupting into flames and carnage after the four police officers who were accused of beating Rodney King were acquitted by a jury in Simi Valley.

These images stay with us. And last week, one more appeared that may be destined for the permanent mental archive of defining moments in American history. It occurred spontaneously, and to the surprise of nearly everyone, when Reginald Denny, the white trucker who was beaten at the corner of Normandie and Florence on the first day of the massive civil unrest that has to come to be known as the L.A. Riots, approached Georgiana Williams, mother of Damian Williams, one of the men accused of beating Denny, and asked to shake her hand. Mrs. Williams held out her arms instead, and gave Denny a hug. It took extraordinary courage and charity on both their parts.

Denny could easily have retreated into a mentality that blamed the entire African-American community for the attack that nearly killed him. He didn’t. He has continued to judge people as individuals. Because he doesn’t hate, he is able to forgive. Because he doesn’t universally condemn, he is able to identify with a mother’s anxiety for his son’s welfare. So he extended his hand.

Georgiana Williams, whose son has already spent a year in jail on suspicion of attacking Denny, could just as easily have refused to shake it. She is vehement that her son is innocent, but she is not immune to Denny’s suffering. Even though his testimony may help the prosecution to put her child away for a long, long time, Williams connected with Denny on a human level. She opened her arms.

Surely, healing Los Angeles will take more than the warm fuzzies that this photo generated, but at this point, hung as we are on the tenterhooks of our own trepidation over the outcome of the Denny trial and the reaction to that outcome, it provided a bit of catharsis. It said maybe, just maybe, we can slowly move toward a point where civil exchange among Los Angeles’ warring tribes will no longer be front-page news. Where our ability to reconnect on a human level, as individuals, not as political symbols, is more the rule than the exception.

Reginald Denny and Georgiana Williams each took a deep breath and gambled that their need to recognize each other’s basic humanity would be greater than their need to remain apart from fear of potential embarrassment or rejection. There’s a lesson in there, somewhere, and we need to learn from it.