African American Leaders & Politicians

 The American people resoundingly elected Barack Obama, an African American, to the presidency of the United States. The tears of joy seen on the faces of African Americans was worthy of all our celebration. Indeed, the issues of the presidential campaign aside, the election of Barack Obama is a huge symbolic step forward in our quest to end racism in America. Barack Obama himself couched his victory speech in the ideals of the nation's founding. He told cheering throngs: "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer." Just forty years prior to Obama's victory speech, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was felled by an assassin's bullet, and the United States (particularly in the South) was embroiled in a highly divisive battle over segregation. A century before that, the nation was ravaged by civil war a conflict that claimed the lives of over 600,000 Americans and maimed in body or spirit tens of thousands more. Slavery and race relations were at the heart of that conflict. And less than a century before that, our Founding Fathers (meeting in Philadelphia) hammered out a com-promise that reduced black citizen’s status to 3/5 of a person for purposes of taxation and representation and protected the dreadful slave trade for 20 more years. While most of the men at the Constitutional Convention were no fans of slavery, the compromise was necessary, they felt, to achieve a new form of government and keep the United States united. Let's agree that the legacy of slavery and segregation are stains on America's honor. To lift ourselves from that past is indeed worthy of celebration.