Fresh Loaf

Jan. 20, 2009, 11:51 a.m., at East Capitol and First Streets N.E., Washington, D.C.

Neither the cold nor the crowds were as bad as people projected. Sure, the lines stretched for city blocks. Yes, the temperature was well below freezing. But, this was history. Frosty fingers and long wait times would not deny me the right to say in my old age “I was there.”

I decided on November 4 that I would be in Washington D.C. on January 20. I didn’t know how I would get there, where I would stay, or if I could get remotely close to the main action. During the months in between, I begged, borrowed, and dealt my way. By a few days before the inauguration I had hopped in a backseat of a car headed to D.C., commandeered a couch in Georgetown, and found a gleaming golden ticket to one of the closest sections to the capitol. I felt like Charlie in the chocolate factory, or rather in the Chocolate City.

Armored with several layers, I went into the cold on the big day. The trains were crowded but not impossible. I waited in line not too far from Chris Tucker and his mother. Throughout the festivities (and I do mean festivities) you could smell alcohol on the breath of some, reaffirming the sense that this was a college homecoming. When Bush came out, the people closest to the Capitol building sang out “na na naa na, hey hey hey, good bye.” Like Obama who would take Bush to task later, we let him know once and for all how we felt, dismissing him to irrelevance.

Looking down the Mall to the Washington Monument, I felt a like a drop in a powerful sea, turning the tide of change and roaring “O-BA-MA!”

(Photo by W. Hassan Marsh)

Bookmark It

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.

November 4, 2008, 11:26 p.m, at Fredrick Douglass Hall, Morehouse College

(Photo and Text by Wendell Hassan Marsh)

Bookmark It