You could see it on the thousands of black faces in the crowd at Barack Obama’s inauguration yesterday: The Dream is realized.
I wish with all of my heart that I could have more of a personal connection and understanding of what this must have felt like for them. It must have been amazing. It was for me, too, in my own way.
Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the big screens in the audience as Obama took the oath of office. But my eyes were on someone else who caught my attention. A single tear ran down the cheek of a young girl, perhaps in her early teens. What it must have been like for this girl, with her whole life ahead of her, to know that for the rest of her life, anything really is possible. Her mother bent down and pressed her lips against that tear, kissing it away. Freedom.
Young black boys on their father’s shoulders getting a glimpse of something their parents perhaps never thought they’d see. Freedom.
Old black women breaking out into song and dance as though they’d never felt the spirit move them to do so in years. Freedom.
I looked at them all, and I said to myself: “Welcome to America.”
