Old stories of struggle long ago buried in the souls of African Americans resurfaced shortly after 11 p.m. Tuesday when the words many have long waited to hear were uttered by newscasters from across the country.

With the announcement that Sen. Barack Obama was now and would forever be known as the nation’s first African American president, women dropped to their knees in prayer, husbands pulled out the bubbly to toast with their wives and tears of joy flowed.

History was made late Tuesday, and for some it was a long time coming.

“Now, to see an African American to be president — we have come from slaves to be doctors, lawyers, astronauts and now to the highest position in the land. We have raised the bar up so high, where it should be,” said Elyria Councilman Forrest Bullocks, D-2nd Ward. “The day has finally come for us.”

Bullocks celebrated quietly at his Elyria home along with his wife and 19-year-old granddaughter, who voted in her first election this year.

For Bullocks, watching Obama proudly announce to the world that “change has come to America” meant the classroom lessons of his youth where he was told be could be anything — including president of the United States — would be more than just talk.

“We heard it, but we knew it wasn’t true for us,” Bullocks said. “But now that day has come for us. That day has come for them.”

For former Elyria Councilman Herman Larkins, the moment was about more than just Obama and his run for the presidency.

It was about the Middle Passage, slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and civil rights. It was about dogs being let loose on young African Americans whose only crime was sipping water from the same fountain as whites, marches and sit-ins.

“I am ecstatic that this has happened in my lifetime,” he said. “I go back to the old days of Jim Crow laws. I’m just a few years younger than Martin Luther King Jr. I experienced discrimination on transportation, at restaurants and at places of entertainment. I can recall the lynching of Emmett Till and when a governor came on TV to justify calling the National Guard in to block the entrance of high schoolers in Little Rock.

“From those things, I did not expect the progress I see today. I expected progress, but I didn’t expect it to roll over all of the things that were once roadblocks to get us to this point.”

Seeing a biracial president was not something Oberlin Councilman Ronnie Rimbert, 55, said he imagined.

“The world’s been watching,” Rimbert said. “We’ve come to our own rescue.”

Charles Peterson, another Oberlin councilman, said his great-grandparents were slaves in the United States.

His mother, born in Mississippi in 1940, was 14 when another 14-year-old, Emmett Till, was murdered in Mississippi after whistling at a white woman in a grocery store.

“It’s amazing to me that with both of my sons, their earliest memory of an American president will be of Barack Hussein Obama,” said Peterson, a professor at the College of Wooster.

The excitement that bubbled up and spilled from the hearts of many can be easily summed up with a physiological reaction that few think of, Larkins said.

“I said to my wife, ‘this is the moment of goose pimples,’ ” he said. “A moment in history that changes, I hope, the whole world.”

Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.

 

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