November 5, 2008

First, let me introduce myself and then possibly explain what the election of President-elect Barack Obama means to me.

I am a 67-year-old, white woman raised by strict parents in what was once a solidly Republican section of New England. For the first 17 years of my life, I had no contact with anyone except those who looked and thought like my family and friends.

There was a black girl who attended my high school for a few months, but I never got to know her. There was also a Quaker family in my hometown, and a yellow house everyone called “the beehive” in the center of town where some less-fortunate families lived. I never got to know any of them either. The only time I saw black people was when Mum took us shopping in the nearby city of Worcester.

After graduation from an all-white high school, I moved to start working in Boston. What an adventure this was! My best friend at work was Nina, a black girl my age. She brought me to her home a few times and introduced me to her friends, a lively group who made me feel welcome immediately. When I shared the fun I was having with my parents, Mum practically had a heart attack and threatened to disown me unless I stopped being friends with “those people.” Nina and I stayed friends for years; I just stopped letting my parents know anything about my life after that. Sadly, this was my first taste of racial prejudice, but not my last.

Years later, I was working two jobs since my day job didn’t pay all that much. A few evenings each week, I worked as a sales person in a department store located near a Dorchester project. Most of the sales people were black women with only a few of us white people. Where I worked, as the only woman in the men’s clothing section, there were two older, white men and one black man about my age. For this job, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I did everything the men did except measure the customer’s inseam. This evening job lasted for quite a few years.

I can still remember how excited the young man I worked with was about the civil rights Freedom Rides during the 1960’s. The night I remember most, though, happened in 1968. Our country had been through the turmoil of President Kennedy’s assassination a few years earlier, and Senator Bobby Kennedy’s death would happen just a short time later. This night, though, hit home for many who lived and worked in this predominantly black area. The news that Dr. King had been killed raced around the store, and we watched as groups of angry, black men roamed up and down the aisles. There was an undercurrent of violence emanating throughout those tense hours, but the manager diffused it by sending us all home early.

When I moved to California later that year, I was delighted to find racial prejudice wasn’t as prevalent in the northern part of the state as it was in South Boston. After buying my first home in an all-black section of Oakland, my neighbors welcomed me without hesitation. One woman who would always check on me if she didn’t see me for days once joked and called me a block-buster in reverse.

So, there is a brief history of my experiences with race relations. It took 67 years for me to welcome a black man as my country’s President. Never forgotten will be the sad and shameful times of civil rights inequalities.

I have never been so proud of my country’s citizens as I was last night. Watching the celebrations around our country, my tears joined those of people I saw on television. What I saw most on those faces was hope, something President-elect Obama is giving us for the future.

We have one more hurdle to overcome in our wonderful country. Will I live to see a woman, even a black woman as President? Thank you for letting me share my feelings of pride, joy, and hope that I tried to explain in this little piece.

Peace to all in the United States of America! Please keep our new leaders safe!