A new dawn of American 
             leadership is at hand.

                                                                     
       President-elect Barack Obama


WOW!

This is an amazing time in history we are all a part of!  Being a minority myself (a gay man) I can relate with the feelings of joy that many African Americans are feeling right now!

HENRY LOUIS GATES had a brilliant article on THE ROOT  this  week. IN OUR LIFETIME, in  part says, "We have all heard stories about those few magical transformative moments in African-American history, extraordinary ritual occasions through which the geographically and socially diverse black community—a nation within a nation, really—molds itself into one united body, determined to achieve one great social purpose and to bear witness to the process by which this grand achievement occurs."


He is referring to New Year's Day in 1863, when tens of thousands of black people huddled together all over the North waiting to see if Abraham Lincoln would sign the Emancipation Proclamation.

The second was the night of June 22, 1938, the storied rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmelin, when black families and friends crowded around radios to listen and cheer as the Brown Bomber knocked out Schmeling in the first round.

The third, of course, was Aug. 28, 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed to the world that he had a dream, in the shadow of a brooding Lincoln, peering down on the assembled throng, while those of us who couldn't be with him in Washington sat around our black-and-white television sets, bound together by King's melodious voice through our tears and with quickened-flesh.

How many black people have given their lives—how many millions of slaves toiled in the fields in endlessly thankless and mindless labor—before this generation could live to see a black person become president?

As a white gay man, who is sick and tired of having this country ran by old white rich Republican straight men, this is indeed a joyous moment in history.

Oprah said it, "HOPE  WON!"



Derrick Sorles