I lived in Southeast Washington DC for ten years. You don't live very long in Southeast without having your eyes opened to racial issues. My children were often the only white faces in their classes. Our metro stop was one past the stop where all the other white people got off. We weren't on some mission or anything. It was just the way things were. I gained some African-American friends that I cherish, and met some African-Americans who I could tell would never be my friend.
The memory of my friends and neighbors moved me last night when Barack Obama won the presidency. I thought of my neighbor, a man in his eighties. A man who fought for his country in in WWII, but was only allowed to serve the land he loves in a segregated unit. He moved his family into a nice home, but only when the law changed to allow "colored" folk in the neighborhood. He and his wife lived there over fifty years, raised four children who went to college, presided over grandchildren who have mostly earned advanced degrees. They are a kind, warm, and hospitable couple and I think have made their corner of the world a better place. I was consistently shocked by how little bitterness they exhibited and how warmly they welcomed our family.
I thought of my kids' preschool teacher, a better woman than perhaps I will ever be. She gives of herself tirelessly. She cares for our children, for her extended family's children, and then goes home to care for her demanding and sickly elderly father. All on a preschool teacher's salary. There are children who escaped the violence and crime of the street because she stepped into their lives.
I don't know if it affected this woman, but her generation in the DC metropolitan area suffered when schools shut down rather than desegregate. Let me say that again. The school system shut down, for two years, rather than desegregate. White children went to private school. Black children, well.... This happened about the same time as my parents were graduating high school. If my father had been denied the chance to graduate and the opportunities that entailed, I'd surely know about it and be angry about it.
And I think of the other parents in my children's' classes. Parents who perhaps did not complete their own education, but who work so hard to ensure their children's' success. I knew one mother who took two buses every morning to get her daughter to school, with a toddler in tow. And then did it all again in the afternoon. I would get crabby if the air conditioning in my car acted up.
When African-American citizens on TV last night kept saying "I didn't think it would happen in my generation," I misted up. Every time. I doubt my neighbor, growing up under Jim Crow, thought he'd live to see a black president. I doubt my kids' teacher, watching her generation be denied a future, thought it would happen in her lifetime. And I doubt my fellow parent, struggling to provide a better life for her child, thought so either.
I don't have to agree with Obama's policies to recognize that this is a beautiful thing. It makes me proud.
There is a song they used to sing at my children's' school. I would stand somewhat uncomfortable and sing along. The emotion of it always got to me. It's often called the Black National Anthem and I offer it here in tribute to all my fellow citizens who thought they would not see an African-American president in their lifetime.
Watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElgJfAoVm8I
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears have been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, Our God, where we met Thee;
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our GOD,
True to our native land
James Weldon Johnson June 17, 1871 - June 26, 1938