“In Our Lifetime”

I remember being home a few months ago at my grandmother’s house.  In her living room sat a copy of the latest Ebony, and on the cover was a picture of Senator Barack Obama with a large heading that read “In Our Lifetime”.  I,like many others, often forget that only forty-three years have passed since African-Americans became full citizens of the United States – the result of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  I asked my 83 year-old grandmother if she ever thought she would see an African-American successfully running for U.S. President.  With a great seriousness I had not expected, she told me “No.”

My grandmother grew up in the rural South.  As a teenager and young adult, she traveled back and forth between New York and Virginia to find work, which usually consisted of cleaning homes and taking care of white children.  My grandmother, however, was also an early member and leader of our county’s NAACP, and when the local school system integrated, her children were among the first to attend the previously all white high school.  Her life, to quote Langston Hughes, has not been a “crystal stair.”  Having witnessed the assassination of King, whose pictures still adorn the walls of her home, and losing three of her six children and my grandfather after over fifty years of marriage, I have always been amazed by the amount of faith my grandmother possessed.  But when I asked her if she thought she would ever see an African-American become president, she told me “No.”

As I watched Senator Obama claim the Democratic presidential nomination last night, all I could think about was my grandmother.  Early yesterday evening I excitedly called her, but she didn’t have much time to talk; she was headed out the door on her way to church.  She did, however, tell me that she had been watching the news all day.  By the time Senator Obama delivered his speech, I new my grandmother was probably asleep.  She would not know that he’d become the nominee until morning.  But what a great way to wake up – realizing that something you had dismissed as being just a dream, was in fact, becoming a reality.