Racial Significance Of Vote Looms Large For Many
Wesley Carter, 101 years old and an African-American, rose at 5:15 in the morning and drove to his polling place, where the line was already two blocks long. It started to rain. He opened the seat built into his cane, sat down and waited.
'I'm the oldest thing around here, and I never believed I'd see a black man as president in my lifetime,' said Mr. Carter, a retired educator. 'It's Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream coming true.'
Across the country, voters went to the polls with many issues weighing on their minds: the worsening economy, the war in Iraq and questions about the candidates. But hovering in the background for many voters -- black and white, John McCain and Barack Obama supporters -- was the reality that America was electing a black man as president.
'Obama is documentation of America's moral progress, the moral evolution we have gone through in the past 40 years,' said Shelby Steele, a black writer and fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, who voted for Sen. McCain. 'Whites don't get credit for it. But having grown up myself in segregation -- America has changed enormously.'
'Sen. Obama is breaking through a major barrier,' said Linda Schlichting, 62, a dean at Virginia Union University, who is white and voted for Sen. Obama. 'We have been led by white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males. This opens the door for continued growth. With the demographics in our country, we're changing rapidly.'
Part of what made the day so emotional for some voters was that they remembered and had lived through segregation and the civil rights movement. Unlike other social changes, including women getting the right to vote, this one took place within the lifetime of many voters. Richmond was the capital of the confederacy during the Civil War, and Virginia had outlawed interracial marriage until a 1967 Supreme Court ruling. In 1990, L. Douglas Wilder, now Richmond's mayor, became Virginia's governor, the nation's first elected African-American governor.
Mr. Carter recalled having to explain to his young son why they couldn't go into a deli in downtown Richmond even though the boy was hungry; the restaurant was for whites only. 'He couldn't understand why we couldn't just go inside and get something to eat,' Mr. Carter said.
Like many voters Tuesday, Mr. Carter expressed concern about Sen. Obama's safety. 'There is a lot of prejudice that still exists, and it only takes one person,' said Mr. Carter. 'I'm very concerned for his life.'
For many younger voters, it was Sen. Obama's refusal to let his race define him that was so appealing
'It's one thing to hear someone say the sky is the limit, but with Obama we can see that,' said God-Goldin Harrison, a 21-year-old marketing major at Virginia Union, who is black. 'We've had doctors and lawyers, and we've known those were things we could achieve, but in politics the presidency was always closed to us. If someone said the sky was the limit, we could say, 'Not quite.' That is no longer the case.'
Meanwhile, in rural Colorado, Chad Max, a white McCain voter, said the possible milestone of a first black president didn't mean much to him and that he was more focused on Sen. Obama's policies than on his race. The 38-year-old noted that he, too, was voting for history -- the first female vice president, Sarah Palin.
But Candice Bahnson, 36, a Colorado security guard voting for Sen. McCain, said even though she felt deep unease about a President Obama's policies, she felt a measure of pride, too, to think that her country might elect its first African-American leader.
'I'm a little nervous about him, but I'm still proud,' she said. 'I'm proud that we as a country have gotten to this point. It's finally happening.' She cradled a cup of coffee, thought a moment, and repeated with a smile: 'It's finally happening.' |
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