My grandmother celebrated her 80th birthday last November. She was born in Baltimore in 1928. She remembers when Black people couldn't sit in the White section of the train. She has told me about not being able to try on hats in stores downtown. She was almost40 years old, a college educated teacher and mother of two when Martin Luther King was killed.
When she went to the polls last November to vote, she carried pictures of my great-grandmother, my great-uncle, and other relatives who have passed on, who never got to see the day that we would be voting for a black president. She called me, near hysterics as he won, witnessing a moment that she never dreamed that she would see in her lifetime.
In a couple weeks my son will be four months old. In a few years, when he learns the name of our President, it will be Barack Obama. I am celebrating today, not just for the sole purpose that the President is Black, but that I can share this moment with my grandmother, who was born into a world where this moment was impossible, and my son, who will never know a world where a Black President lies outside of the boundaries of possibility.
When she went to the polls last November to vote, she carried pictures of my great-grandmother, my great-uncle, and other relatives who have passed on, who never got to see the day that we would be voting for a black president. She called me, near hysterics as he won, witnessing a moment that she never dreamed that she would see in her lifetime.
In a couple weeks my son will be four months old. In a few years, when he learns the name of our President, it will be Barack Obama. I am celebrating today, not just for the sole purpose that the President is Black, but that I can share this moment with my grandmother, who was born into a world where this moment was impossible, and my son, who will never know a world where a Black President lies outside of the boundaries of possibility.
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