I didn’t have to stay up late last night after all. Not even two hours after our polls closed, even though N.C. was too close to call at the time, it was apparent who our next president was going to be. Our phone started ringing. You’d think it was Christmas. I felt like crying but squealed instead. We giggled a lot. But part of the time, we were somber even melancholy. We thought about our parents, grand parents and great grandparents who would never have believed this day would come.

It should not have mattered in the first place, it shouldn’t have been an issue, but damn, a black American is finally in the white house! I’m at a loss for words… It’s hard to describe how much pride I’m feeling right now. How much more the people I love? They who lived through segregation? They who couldn’t get a drink of water because they had a touch of black? They who couldn’t vote and were persecuted for wanting to vote? They who suffered unspeakable humiliation just for existing?

It’s not that a dark skinned person is finally president of this country, it’s not that that makes me happy. I am happy and I am hopeful that maybe there is a chance for people to change after all. I am hopeful that the dream that Dr. Martin Luther King’s talked of, of not being judged by the color of one’s skin, is finally sinking in. I think a lot of the celebration going on last night is not about having finally got one of our own in there, it’s that finally, we are being judged by the content of our hearts and mind rather than the wrapping it came with.