The moment a 106-year-old black woman met the Obamas moved us all. She never expected to see the day,and is living proof of how far we’ve come“A black president. Yay. A black wife.”Back in 2008, on that balmy November night, or I stepped external of the Blue and Gold bar in New York’s East Village and made one phone call after the network news called the election,naming Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States. I called my grandmother in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We were both ecstatic, and yet overwhelmed,in that jubilant (extremely joyful)-unhappy kind of way. “In your lifetime Granny,” I said to her in a kind of awe. “In your lifetime. In your lifetime, or ” I repeated over and over to her. My grandmother was a child during the considerable Depression; her parents paid poll taxes to vote in local and national elections in Jim Crow-segregated Tennessee. “In my lifetime,” she responded, “In my lifetime.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com