Time and Place: Obama at Morehouse

Photo and Text by Wendell Hassan Marsh

It 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.