Spring Break
For older blacks, inauguration a dream fulfilled
Associated Press
Issue date: 1/21/09 Section: News
|
One of her grandsons asked, "How do you feel about having a black president?"
"Well," Cooper said, "I helped put him there."
And so she had.
It was not just Cooper. It was all the men and women of the black generations who endured the cruelties of Jim Crow, who knew the indignity of separate drinking fountains and the terror of snarling dogs. They fought back with sit-ins and boycotts and ballots.
On Tuesday, with weathered hands and strength that belied their age, they applauded Obama - and the role they played in sending one of their own to the White House.
"I was hoping for a great change that would happen in my day," said Cooper, whose story was highlighted in Obama's speech the night he won the election. "I put my thoughts into ideas pointed towards better days for our people."
Mary K. Jones, a 78-year-old retired university professor in Detroit, has come a long way from the sweltering heat and segregation of Arkansas. She grew up there, along the banks of the Mississippi River, on the same 40 acres her great-grandmother - a former slave - received from the U.S. government.
"Jim Crow and segregation were something we were born into. It was just a way of life," Jones said Tuesday. "We lived in a certain area. We all knew where we could go or couldn't go. You stayed where you were. But they (whites) were in their place, too."
When Obama took the oath of office, Jones sat up in her chair, clasped her hands to her chest and smiled.
"There is still integrity. It's not lost," Jones said. "I feel very full."
Sam Cain stood up and threw his hands in the air, tears streaming down his face after Obama took the oath of office. The 61-year-old South Carolina native was born in the midst of Jim Crow's heyday, barred from eating and drinking with his white neighbors in his Bishopville hometown.
Be the first to comment on this story