Wednesday, November 5, 2008

The Book of Days I: A New Day

Copyright 2008. All Rights Reserved


November 4, 2008. Election night. Approximately 8:15 p.m. (California time).

I have come back from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and switched on the television set in my bedroom. An image. A Black man. A message. It takes me more than a few seconds to take it in.

This is what I saw. A photo of Barack Obama with his hands folded across his chest. He is smiling. Under his photo there are words. Unbelievable words. Words that I just can’t comprehend at first. They say:

Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States.

Has there been a mistake? Have I misread it? Are they trippin’ at NBC headquarters? An early, MISTAKEN call, perhaps? Something.

Maybe I’ve gone demented.

But, no. I haven’t Brian Williams, the NBC anchor, assures me and everyone else that Obama has won. That he’s pulled enough electoral votes ALREADY that has put him over the required 270. That he is, in fact, the President-Elect of the United States.

I had expected a long, hard night. A big, a monumental struggle with election returns trickling in slowly. As slow as molasses. But…

Change and History. Just like that, they happen. Lightning fast.

Change and History. Forty years ago, in April of 1968, history was written. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee—my home state. The change agent, the man who had come to lead us to a new level—to change the way things were—was dead. Gone. Quick as a wink. Fast as a speeding bullet. He’d brought us as far as he could. Now, he was gone. We had to go the rest of the way without him. Without the beloved shepherd.
In April, Bobby Kennedy, running in the Primaries for President of the United States, bravely brings the horrible news of King’s murder to a crowd of African-Americans in the streets of Indianapolis, Indiana. Stunned, they go home.

Now, I think: King is no longer with us, but still Bobby is. There's still Hope.

I love Bobby because he’d changed. Because he’s brave. Because he promises Hope. Because he is now our change agent. I was sure he’d bring us through.

In June of 1968, the book of history gets another inscription. They murder Bobby and, once more, Change is ushered in. As is Richard Nixon that November. Ushered into the White House in 1968 as President of the United States. Change had come. And, with these changing events, Hope, for me, had died: for a better day…for the promise that we could bridge the chasm that racism had had forged. For me, Hope had died. And stayed dead for forty years.

Stayed dead until last night. When Barack Obama and the citizens of the United States resurrected it. On television in Grant Park, Chicago, I saw it reflected on the faces of the people gathered there. I saw Hope in all its shining star beauty. I felt it reborn in me.

Hope and Change. A new day. Another change agent ushering it in. A man who will be, we hope, our pathfinder as we cross this wilderness that is Change.

Change. From living Jim Crow as I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee to my witnessing the election of the first Black President of the United States last night.

It’s a journey for me. It’s history I'm living.

It’s a paradigm shift... Change that’s worth noting in my Book of Days.

End.