My elation and choked sobs upon Barack Obama’s election told me how many wounds I had inside me that I didn’t know were still there, from protesting against racism in the 1960s and watching Washington D.C. burn after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. But then, I don’t think any of us realizes the full effect something has had until the situations that caused the pain better themselves. Quite simply, my tears of joy triggered and released all that pain I’d held in previously. I was washed in healing – late – but healing can never be too late.

As a white college student, I’d missed the March on Washington in 1963 not only because I couldn’t leave a summer job but also because I didn’t understand the full import of what I was passing up. It would be the next year when I would become a civil rights activist.

 

Now, with Senator Obama running for President, I wasn’t going to miss another chance to be part of history. My volunteering for his campaign took me to new parts of Georgia – my home – and NC where I listened to voters in a trailer park outside Asheville voice their fear about outsiders. That was my first introduction to deep Appalachian racism up close. Though I often seek out being the only white in an African-American environment, I do not enjoy being the only liberal in a sea of conservatism that seems spawned by fear.

 

The best campaign experience was Election Day, when I drove voters to the polls in Atlanta. These images and emotions will be with me forever:

 

- The young African-American woman crossing the street, smiling at me in a line of volunteer drivers, then looking back again to see if I saw her. I’m used to genuine smiles but this longer eye contact was different as I’m usually the one who needs to connect. Election results were not yet in and the world was already different from hope and working together.

 

- The middle-aged African-American man walking towards me as I sat outside a polling place in my car waiting for my voter to finish voting. He was smiling to himself so gently, with a bit of surprise as if the whole experience was surreal. “Are you done?” I asked. “Yeah, all done,” he said, and his smile grew broader as if he was stepping into a bubble of safety and peace. When my voter came out he was grinning from ear to ear, and as he got into the car he gave me a high five. His feeling of newfound empowerment made me feel I was enabling someone in achieving something that was as important as breathing and eating.

 

- And at the end of the day, the young woman who worked in the cafeteria at Atlanta University who, like everyone I drove that day, was a first time voter. We raced around in the dark on endless stretches of highway, lost and determined to reach the polls before closing. With two minutes to spare, she was able to vote a provisional ballot because we had ended up at the wrong polling station. The poll workers thanked me for bringing her, then gave her – the last voter - a round of applause on her way out. The poll volunteer outside gave us both hugs, prompting a confession from my voter that she almost cried she was so worried she wouldn’t be able to vote. What a different election this was!

 

I have been so inspired by Obama’s hard work and the change in those voters I met that I’ve made a pledge to myself to be more disciplined in achieving my own goals. My biggest challenge, however, will be to not give up on my friends who voted for his opponent. Normally I wouldn’t have known, because I learned long ago not to talk about politics if I wanted to build unity, but this campaign trained me to ask strangers whom they were voting for. And when I carried that practice over to a few friends I learned our values weren’t similar at all, which was a heartbreaking discovery. 

 

Nevertheless, in a day when a biracial man can become President and inspire a country to hope, I should be able to hope that I can give my friends greater room to grow in their own way. With Obama’s bipartisanship and invitation to help in changing America, there is hope they will come around to seeing life from a different perspective, one that fosters working together for the same goal, that of caring for our country and one another.