A Friend's Response to the Election

A pastor friend from Alabama wrote the following letter to some of us to share his reaction to the Obama election. His father, also a pastor, had been very active in civil rights as had his sister, and he in his own right:


Dearest Ones,

One of the memories seared into my soul from my childhood is the presence of the black people who worked for us in and around our home. We, like so many other white families, employed black domestics on a regular basis for years in Montgomery and Mobile. I was a child at home in Montgomery, not yet in school, and later in Mobile, I was the elementary school boy with more time spent on the homefront than my teen-age sister. So, I got really close to our “help.”

When I would talk to them, which I did at length on lazy old sunny days, I would listen to their stories and their reports on the status of things in their families (not always good) and feel so big. I thought I was their confidant, which I kind of was. It was not unusual in the South of that day for little white children to be the only creatures a black person would dare to reveal more than perfunctory details of life to. They were wise. They knew children would not run off and tell everything to white grown-ups, because a child seriously values being talked to without condescension and reveres the one who shares so intimately. In the child’s eye, it is all a huge, mysterious, sacred secret between the conversing parties, and the “spell” is broken if anything is leaked to those on the outside.

So, I would spend hours with Katie and JoJo and Fax Oliver and Silvie, soaking up the treasures of heart-to-heart exchanges, but mostly just listening to them and being exposed to a rich vein of human experience and insight. The thing I most remember about them physically was how natural their facial expressions were and how easily they made eye contact as our gabfest unfolded.

Mother and I would go shopping downtown in Montgomery and Mobile. As we passed black men and women on the open streets, there was no conversation, barely even an acknowledgment that they were there. Gone was the conviviality of the backporch chats I had with my buddies at the house. Most memorably, the faces of these people were blank, unreadable. And their eyes were downcast, their heads lowered. I did not know then what to call it, but I saw it. Later, I would learn that you label such a thing subservience.

This morning, I went into a fast-food place for a cup of coffee. While seated fixing my brew, a black man about my age stopped near my table to rearrange his sack of breakfast goodies before going back outside to his car. I was reading the morning paper—the election edition of the Montgomery Advertiser—and looked up at him. I said, “That was quite a night last night, wasn’t it?” He replied at once, with gusto: “I mean to tell you it was!! I only wish my mama and papa were alive to see this day. Has there ever been a more beautiful day than today? I told my son this morning, ‘Boy, you take this day off from your job and just sit and contemplate what has happened! Your grandparents laid the foundation for it and you owe them homage!’ “ Then, he smiled as big as Satchmo, and wheeled around to go. As he departed I called out, “I wish my folks were around for this, too!” He turned back to me at the door and nodded his head, departing with these words. “Mine and yours are aware of it, I just feel it.”

Two things stayed with me long after he left. One was that it seemed I was back in my boyhood and had just finished one of those cherished dialogues. The other was that this time there was no secrecy assumed or needed. Oh, and one other thing. We were very much in public but he never once erased the true emotion from his face or lowered his head to me. He just said his piece and walked out into the sun with confident eyes wide open and head erect.

One measure to me of the extent of the meaning of last night’s victory by President-elect Obama is the distance between expressions of real humanity by blacks during my childhood, which only emerged when I was alone with them and otherwise stayed hidden when they were in plain view of The Man, and the joyful exclamations of my restaurant friend given right out front without hesitation or apology. He could do it now, though his forebears could not, for many reasons all of us who know our country’s history could recite. But the newest reason is that The Man is no longer of my tribe, but is personified in a black man from Illinois.

I know. He had a white mother. Race isn’t the only barrier that needs to be taken down. He represents lots of intersecting human realities, but he is only one person and exclusiveness is a disease curable only when all are accepted for who and what they are. This venture we are about to embark upon could become embittering if he proves to be less than meets the eye. Only fools place their hopes on one leader. And so on. But I for one will return to all that in due time. It all contains much truth and will always be there to work on. Just not today, please!

I am reminded of Jesus’ last week on this side of the grave when he was trying to rest at a friend’s house in Bethany. Some woman broke a jar of expensive ointment and poured it over his feet and bathed them in it. The crowd around him took her to task, saying the stuff had been wasted, that it could have been sold and the money used for the needy. But Jesus shut them up and said that what they had missed, and what the woman understood, was that on this day in this place Jesus was alive, available, a presence worth celebrating and honoring. It would not always be so, he said. There would always be more justice work to do, a society to perfect, etc (the poor are always with you). But at that precise moment, it was time to appreciate the man of the hour, to prepare him for his near-at-hand ordeal, show solidarity with him, and pay beautiful tribute to his impact.

Of course, I am not equating President-elect Obama with the fellow from Galilee. I do have a few parameters left that I observe! But all I am saying is that those of us who recognize what has just happened for the singular thing that it is need to stop and thank God we are alive on this day. Of the future, we know not. But today, a bugle has blown. A harmonious chorus is out performing a discordant one. A link has been forged between an ignominious past and a redemptive present. Break a jar of something expensive. Let it flow. Savor this time without reservation or skepticism. Our homeland has done a good thing. It has done a great thing.

“I only wish my mama and papa were alive to see this day.”

“I wish my folks were around for this, too.”

“Mine and yours are aware of it, I just feel it.”


Spencer Turnipseed