Looking Down

A co-worker's father wrote this:

LOOKING DOWN

To borrow from two historical giants—FDR and MLK—Yesterday, November 4, 2008—a day that will live in HISTORY (ne: infamy), was the day that content of character triumphed over color of skin.

Barack Hussein Obama will be the next President of the United States—nit because all the black folks voted for him, but because (as the Rock would say), millions… and MILLIONS of white, Hispanic, Asian, gay and straight folks voted for him as well.
He won—not because he was Black, but because he was Best.

Somewhere in the place where all souls go, there are folks looking down with joy in their hearts and pride for the human race. Some of them you know, but many you either don’t know or have forgotten.

First, the obvious:

• Martin Luther King
• Malcolm X
• Robert Kennedy
• Jackie Roosevelt Robinson
• Lyndon B Johnson
  

And there are others—people most white folks have never learned about, because traditional history has been nothing more than the white folks’ fairy tale—people like:

Frederick Douglass (Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey)—arguably the most powerful civil rights leader of all history. An escaped slave who taught himself to read and became the first African-American leader of the civil rights movement in the mid-19th Century. He ran for Vice-President in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket (Victoria Woodhull was the presidential candidate), and in 1888 he became the first African American to receive a roll call vote for the Presidency at the Republican National Convention (yes, they used to be the good guys).

Crispus Attucks—the First Martyr of the American Revolution. Attucks was one of five people killed in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the first African-American to obtain a PhD from Harvard and one of the founders of the NAACP. As an intellectual, Du Bois’ adversary was the much better-accepted Booker T Washington. Du Bois thought Black Folk should be able to succeed at the highest level, not just get a job. He wrote the seminal book on race in the 20th Century—The Souls of Black Folk. On the issue of race, he wrote: “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line”….

Emmett Till - Till was a 14-year old from Chicago who made two mistakes in the summer of 1955. He visited his relatives in Sumner, Mississippi, and he smiled a white woman. For the second offense he was dragged off and brutally murdered—his head literally caved in. His murderers not only got off, but sold their story to Look magazine. Till’s mother was so outraged that she made them leave the casket open at his funeral so the world could see what had been done.

Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner and James Chaney—the civil rights workers who were abducted and killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi on August 4, 1964

Sojourner Truth - possibly the most remarkable woman (aside from Helen Keller) to have ever lived in these United States. Illiterate and raised speaking Dutch, Ms. Truth fought to free herself from slavery, fought to get her son out of slavery in the South, fought to own land and fought for women’s rights. Once, when confronting both racial and gender issues (many thought because she stood nearly six feet tall and could work like a man, she must BE a man), she stood up, ripped open her dress, baring her breasts and asked, “Ain’t I a woman?”

Harriet Tubman—the tireless conductor of the Underground Railroad who risked her life time after time to help usher slaves to Canada.

The list goes on and on—simply too many to mention—The Brownsville Boys, the millions of people held in slavery and only counted as 3/5 of a human being by the U.S. Constitution, the people who were lynched and who were memorialized in Billie Holliday’s song, “Strange Fruit”, and so many nameless, faceless souls who endured suffering most of us cannot even imagine.

They must be smiling.

But last night was not about simply surmounting four hundred years of shame. If that were the case it would be a token decision.

Last night was about people who confronted their personal beliefs and their personal desires and goals for their friends, their families and their country. Last night the ideals triumphed over the business as usual politics of the gutter.

Last night people chose hope over hate and heart over hurt. Last night White Americans, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Christian-Americans, Muslim-Americans and Whatever-else-Americans realized that they all share one thing: Americans.

Last night could prove to be a moment of true transition—a moment where people decided that there is only one race—the Human Race, that love triumphs over hate, and that no matter how good it feels today, the real work has just begun.

As for myself, I am in a state of euphoria the likes of which I have never experienced in my life. I am thinking about all the people I have met and known well in my life for whom this moment would have tremendous meaning—people like Miriam Wilkes, my third and fourth grade teacher, who taught me about equality and whose house had been a stop on the Underground Railroad.

People like my friend, teacher and mentor, Whittingtom B Johnson from the University of Miami, who opened my eyes to a world I had never imagined.

And finally to people like Corrine Thompkins, Marie Sallins, Maria Cueto, Robert Collier, Sarah Rodriguez, Alice Jones, Dorothy Grant, Lena, Johnny Williams, Larcie Hall, Vernelle Davis, Mrs. Kyle, Ben Johnson, Manny and so many other hard-working, honest, salt of the earth folks who went to work day after day to provide hope and opportunity for their children and grandchildren.

Today their souls must be joyous. Today they know that the door will open for their descendants as long as they have the qualifications to do the job and the desire to try.

Today is a great day to be a human being alive in God’s world—and the best day of my life to be an American.

F.C.