Time and Place: Obama at Morehouse
November 12, 2008 at 6:20 pm by Wendell Hassan Marsh in NewsIt was hard to breathe last Tuesday night on the campus of Morehouse College. The election season often felt like someone was pushing our head into and out of water. But then the time came to sit back and watch the tide of electoral votes come in. This community of black men was confident that the right thing would happen. However, no matter how beautiful we saw the potential waves of change, we feared being yanked down by the undertow of history and deep-seated inequality.
Thankfully, the only threat of drowning that we faced that night was the inundation of tears by even the most manly of men — black men who are usually depicted as devoid of emotion.
We have a unique culture on our campus. No matter the individual’s socioeconomic background, we live with a reminder of how far we can fall if we slip on any side of the narrow path. We assume our cool and sometime violent posture to save face in a hostile world. We live embattled from all sides. Hope is not a campaign slogan. Hope has a more significant meaning for us who everyday look at the face of nihilism, sometimes in our peers, sometimes in the mirror. The tension broke when we saw the electoral count tip in Obama’s favor. I have never in my life seen such eruption of pure elation that broke out on the Atlanta University Center campuses. This was not just an election. For us, Obama’s win was a victory for the affirmation of human dignity. And for the first time we took off our “face” and our cool, and some of us cried.
November 4, 2008, 11:26 p.m, at Fredrick Douglass Hall, Morehouse College
(Photo and Text by Wendell Hassan Marsh)
November 12th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
We’ve read them all: “We wear the mask that grins and lies…” (Dunbar) “The Negro in America struggles with a double consciousness…” (Dubois). Joeff, this article stands in a line of articulate and poetic illustrations of the complex Black American. Thank you thank you thank you. I’m hanging this on my classroom wall.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Beautiful. This shot struck a chord with me. Black men cry too sometimes. loves it.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
That was lovely. Thank you for reporting, and recording, that.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:31 am
This picture is worth a million years and 7 seas of tears!
The black man in America can once again believe in the legacies of their ancestors and can look at this election 08 as the beginning of a possible reconciliation between America & the Afrakan.
Surely one is well overdue…
I would like to tell my brova’s at Morehouse that they are ALL winners and are already a shining example for every little black boy in the ghetto who has no idea that “TOGETHER”
YES WE CAN!!!!
BIG UP!