Tonight, like millions of Americans and people around the world, I will watch Barack Obama’s triumphant nomination speech. I will applaud the efforts of the first black man to reach the pinnacle of American politics by accepting his Party’s nomination for President.
But unlike a lot of people, I won’t be surprised or awed. I’ve seen a black man run for President before. I can remember the palpable excitement and possibility in the air when Jesse Jackson ran for President in 1988. In today’s fast-food, disposable world, there are apparently some who believe history is what happened a few minutes ago. It’s not. When Barack Obama accepts his nomination tonight, as the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black African man from Kenya, he will do so only on the shoulders of those who came before him.
While many would like to dismiss Jesse Jackson as an old relic whose time has come and gone, he and New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm before him, who also ran for President, saw a vision of hope and progress before Obama was even old enough to vote. Jackson, whose refrain of “Keep Hope Alive!” electrified the Democratic Convention in 1988, ran with his own Rainbow Coalition, a precursor of the multi-racial, inclusive campaign that Obama is so successfully running now.
Hope and progress were a large part of Jackson’s campaign, too, particularly after two terms of Republican rule under Ronald Reagan. Sound familiar?
To say that Obama has charted the course of history without acknowledging the sacrifices of those who came before him is like saying there could have been Prince without James Brown. Jackson’s bid for the presidential nomination was ultimately unsuccessful, but the lasting impact of his effort can be echoed in Obama’s triumph. Who’s to say, since both emerged from Chicago, that the very community organizations that Obama gained his early political experience with weren’t somehow influenced by Jackson’s legendary run? Or that just like now, people who worked on that campaign and dedicated themselves to public service aren’t the very same folks who’ve contributed to Obama’s well-oiled machine?
So please, enjoy and celebrate the brother who’s made it all the way to the mountaintop, on the legacies of Fannie Lou Hamer, Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisolm, Martin Luther King and all the other nameless, faceless people who sacrificed much, in many cases even their lives, so that Barack Obama could accept this nomination tonight. May he serve them, and this country well, should he make it past McCain and the racist, frightened white folks who want to maintain the status quo of wealthy white men f---g up the country. But history deserves its due. Congratulations, Barack Obama and keep hope alive.
-Hellifiknow