Overcome

The joy unleashed last night when Barack Obama was declared the 44th President of the United States was something to see. It was a squeaker, but even my staunchly Republican town voted for a chance to overcome the damage of the Bush years, wallets be damned.

I watched Jesse Jackson weeping, overcome by the historical moment he was witnessing.

As I was drifting off to a short but peaceful sleep, I thought about my mother's tiny part in the history made last night. The year was 1961, the place Montgomery, Alabama. Shocked and outraged by the the Whites/Coloreds Only signs she saw on her first visit to the Deep South, my mother deliberately drank from a "Coloreds Only" water fountain one day, refusing to stop even when a police officer tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to the sign above. My father had to drag her away, fearing the officer would act on his threat to arrest her. She was proud of this moment, her act of rebellion, and even though she changed nothing in Alabama, she had a story to tell her five children, a story that perfectly illustrated how racial discrimination was hateful and cowardly, something to oppose, reject, and one day, eliminate.

Mom, you would have loved this moment. Your children lived to see it , and your children's children don't even understand what the big deal is. To them, the Civil Rights Era is just another chapter in their U.S. History book.

Change has come, and not a moment too soon.

May we continue to overcome.