Obama in the Morning

This Tuesday (Wednesday in Sydney), Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44 th President of the United States of America. People in Australia and around the world will celebrate his inauguration because of what he represents to the world: a man with global vision, leadership, intelligence, and moral values. They will welcome his spirit of cooperation and mutual respect, his first reliance on consultation and diplomacy, and his moral suasion. He is a welcome replacement for the dark, insular years brought about by his predecessor.

Many Americans welcome his ascendancy for other reasons. Those of us who have lived long can remember the dark times of segregation and racial hatred that consumed and divided our country. We have our own stories.

As a young man at University in the 1970’s, I became friends with a black woman, who was a classmate. She told me of her efforts with friends to work for the election of a black candidate for mayor of Bloomington, Indiana, where we lived. Soon I joined the campaign and became very involved. Bloomington was a southern city at the time. While home to Indiana University, the non-University community was conservative and rural. Blacks and whites lived in separate neighborhoods and did not mix. Whites socialized in country and western bars; blacks had their own destinations. A black man running for mayor was easily dismissed in the white community.

As we begin to build some momentum drawing on the Black and the University community support, the threats begin to arrive. The hate mail, the death threats, especially to our black campaign workers, the midnight phone calls threatening to kill children and families brought a terror I had never before encountered. I saw it in their faces every day; fear, real fear for themselves and their families. The Klu Klux Klan threatened to mobilize. The feeling of terror was real and omnipresent.

At campaign meetings we counted attendees, worried that some would be missing and not found. Campaign workers in Mississippi had been killed recently working on a similar mayoral election. We were scared, but we persevered. We were on a righteous mission in a democracy we all believed in.

In the end, our candidate won in a historic election for southern Indiana. It was a point of light on an otherwise dark canvas.

Having witnessed the intense racial hatred in my lifetime, it is overwhelming for me to see a black man become President. Having grown up with racial violence dominating the news, listening to the racial slurs and intolerance in my own family, and believing personally and fervently in human dignity and equality, I could not imagine a President Barack Obama. I am sure millions of others could never envision such a thing either.

Tuesday is my day, and it is the day of millions of Americans who thought they would never experience the nation coming together to elect a black President, not in their lifetime.

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Barak O’Bama never had much of a chance. Hilliary Clinton had the Democratic nomination all but locked up. But Obama went to Iowa, a rural farm state in the middle of the country to campaign in the first primary contest. He was the longest of long shots.

On a cold winter night last February, my older brother who was then 70 years old and his 69 year old wife braved the cold and ice and snow to drive to the meeting hall in Algona, Iowa, a small town in the northeastern part of the state. . In a primary caucus, you have to show up in person and announce your vote for your candidate. My brother, Bing, formerly the head of the opposition Republican Party in the County, stood with his wife Molly, shivering from the cold but waiting patiently to announce for Barack Obama. With Bing’s determined support and thousands like him, Obama won Iowa and went on to win the nomination.

So when Barack Obama puts his hand on the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used in 1860 and is sworn in as the 44th President, my brother Bing in Algona Iowa and I, in Sydney Australia will be watching. For me, it will be around 3:30 AM on Wednesday, but that’s okay. This is my day. This is the day I never thought I would see.

If I appear a little tired Wednesday at work, please excuse me. I will be up early watching my new President and wondering how so much can change in one lifetime.