"I Voted". That's what is printed on the tiny slip of paper that the poll worker handed me yesterday. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. It looks very much like a postage stamp, and has adhesive on the back so you can fasten it on your shirt. I heard on the radio that I could have taken it to Krispy Kreme and gotten a free doughnut; but I think I'll hold on to this one. It's special. I want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to see it, and hopefully understand why the old man kept it. I vote in the cafeteria of Georgia Washington Junior High School, originally built to educate the children of sharecroppers on the huge cotton plantations that used to dominate the eastern half of our county. The plantations are gone now, the cotton fields sub-divided for upscale homes, but chronic under-funding of public education, and chronic racial fear and mistrust, has kept the school enrollment almost 100% black. The grandchildren of those sharecroppers don't have the option of sending their children to the expensive private schools that have strangled public education in Montgomery, so they continue to go to Georgia Washington. I picked up my paper ballot and sat down at the rickety chair with the Bic pen they had given me. As I finished marking the first little oval on the ballot - President of the United States of America - I felt a big grin coming on, and I just leaned back in my chair to enjoy the moment. We are really doing it, we are actually electing a black man to be our President, and we are doing it in my lifetime. Last night, while watching all those happy folks celebrating in Chicago's Grant Park, I heard an interview with John Lewis. He talked about all the people he remembered from The Movement who would have been so happy to see this. He talked about Martin Luther King of course, and the hundreds of brave young idealists who came south during Freedom Summer, some of them on a one-way trip. He talked about President Johnson, who risked so much politically for the Voting Rights Act. All these people must be remembered today, because Barack Obama stands on their shoulders. Being of a somewhat darker frame of mind than Congressman Lewis, I also remember the bigots that have been so much a part of our history. I marched in George Wallace's inaugural parade in January of 1963 as a member of the University of Alabama Band. That was the day he promised "... segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Then in the summer of that same year, I was standing across the street from the University's Foster Auditorium when Wallace and the Kennedy Administration carried out that delicate little charade that became known as "Standing in the Schoolhouse Door" to prevent Vivian Malone and James Hood from registering for classes. I remember the snarling, jeering Klansmen that lined the sidewalk in front of Morrison's Cafeteria in Tuscaloosa when it first began serving black customers. And I remember those two stalwart men, fathers of friends of mine, who stood on the steps of Forest Avenue Methodist Church in Montgomery every Sunday morning with loaded pistols strapped on their belts, ready to defend the church against the horror of a black family joining us for worship. Jesus loves you, this I know. It is hard for someone who has not lived in the South to fully grasp how far we have come in the lifetime of my generation. We still have a long, long way to go, but we took another huge step forward yesterday. Most of my white friends are genuinely horrified at the outcome of the election, but just as the Civil Rights movement dragged us, kicking and screaming, out of the 19th Century into the bright lights of contemporary Atlanta and Charlotte and Nashville, this election will yank us forward against our will yet again. The number one beneficiaries of the success of the Civil Rights Movement were the white business classes. The prosperity of today's South was unimaginable for our ingrown, God-bedeviled society in the dark, third-world atmosphere of 1955. I predict that one byproduct of yesterday's political earthquake will be another leap into a brighter future for our region, whether we deserve it or not. Now, our massive black population, largely dormant politically up to now, has the example of an energetic, dynamic young President to inspire them. If they follow that lead, and if they vote in the numbers they did yesterday, nothing is impossible for them, and for the new New South. So Harrison, Borden, Ben, Anna and Jack - I want you to look at this "I Voted" sticker that your Papa saved, and know that on November 4, 2008, your country did a great and good thing, and maybe, just maybe, we began to put the ugliness and hatred behind us. Thomas R. Borden Waugh, Alabama, November 5, 2008 |