Obama's election ties African-American, U.S. history

By Joye Brown

WASHINGTON

Walking along the Mall the day after Barack Obama was inaugurated as the nation's 44th president, I saw something I'd never seen before.

Clusters of people, of all races and ages, strolling along and talking out loud about U.S. history.

They talked about presidents. Congress and the Capitol. And I watched two teens pause, astonished, as they stood on the Mall and looked back to see the White House in the distance behind them.

In years past, the usual crowd visiting my hometown included excited teachers leading around groups of bored students, or parents working hard to keep up with rambunctious children sprinting toward the Mall's carousel or the head of a dinosaur at one of the many nearby Smithsonian museums.

But, for one day at least, the inauguration of the nation's first African-American president changed that.

History.

Black history.

American history.

Visitors couldn't get enough of it.

Which is a grand notion as the nation plots its next moves forward.

It took more than 200 years for the United States to elect its first African-American president. What's impressive is that the nation, voting across racial, gender, economic and political lines, did it together.

The act itself was a revolution, one built on other revolutions.

The nation's founders had a notion that the United States could be a place that offered liberty and justice for all, even as slavery continued to be a blight on the land.

And when enslaved Africans finally were freed, they faced the harsh reality that being free did not mean they were fully vested citizens.

The fight for civil rights actually began during the Civil War.

That much University of Virginia historian Jennifer Burns makes clear during a fascinating series of lectures on American history (easily downloaded as a podcast at jenniferburns.org).

She says the 4 million enslaved Africans in the South had a hand in freeing themselves. Their desire to be free flew in the face of Southern mythology that slaves were childlike and wanted the security of being slaves. The successful flight of many of the masters' most trusted slaves to the North belied the myth that plantation owners were in charge. And the North's hard-won willingness finally to allow slaves to join the Union Army (in extremely harsh and dangerous jobs) gave African-Americans - including Frederick Douglass - hope that they could work their way toward the privilege of full citizenship.

There's no National Museum of African-American History on the Mall, but there are plans to build one.

No doubt the civil rights movement will be part of it.

Still, it's not too early to begin connecting the dots, from 4 million enslaved Africans and their descendants and their thirst for freedom before and during the Civil War to the stories of modern-day Long Islanders included in this special Black History Month special section to a nation's collective move to elect an African-American president.

Joseph McNeil is in the history books. He's one of the young men who refused to leave a luncheon counter in the segregated South. Barbara Patton, Darlene Harris and Roger Corbin are in the local history books, too. They were the first local African-American state and county legislative representatives. And Marge Rogatz, one of the many Long Islanders active in local civil rights efforts, is still in the thick of things - pushing for affordable housing, among other things.

They're all part of the same story.

History.

Black history.

U.S. history.

Three strands that this year, finally, and firmly, were joined together as one

Article Source: http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/sunday/lilife/ny-bhpage26019667feb01,0,5130028.column

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