Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the Southtown Star (Illinois). It is reprinted with permission from the author.

When I heard Senator Barack Obama address the 2004 Democratic National Convention, I went to the phone to call the young people of my family to tell them to turn on television to watch the next President of the United States.

As the campaign progressed I analyzed the four people at the top of their tickets. There were three pronouns that came to mind to define each of them. The three pronouns were they, me and we.  Each of the candidates expressed their philosophies and points of view framed by those three pronouns as they revealed much of their character and their style of governance. The “they” was Sarah Palin because she advocated a philosophy of division. Hers was an us against them philosophy. Then for Senator John McCain, it was a “me.” He talked about how, “I will get bin Laden, I know how to get binLaden.” I felt this was selfish because for the sake of our country if he knew how to get binLaden why didn’t he share it with our military. It was like emotional blackmail and a subliminal message of fear. Only if we elected him would he capture binLaden.  The “we” was Senator Barack Obama and Senator Joe Biden. I don’t recall hearing either of them talk about “I.”  This “we” to me was all-inclusive and encompassing and embracing of all of America’s people.

President-elect Barack Obama proved that he was a unifying and healing force for the good of all Americans. I loved the way he reached out to the McCain/Palin ticket and to all of those who did not vote for him.  His statement that he was their President, too, was especially powerful, poignant and promising.

Though I was overwhelmed with emotion when it was announced that Barack Obama was the President-Elect, I cried, though I knew that it would come to pass. Why did I cry? I cried because my father had to leave the South at age 11 to come North for a safer and better life. I cried because my parents, children of the old South, were not alive to see this historical moment when America finally fulfilled her promise. I cried because Emmitt Till was murdered while, though unaware, my sisters and I were in Mississippi on our journey to where our parents were born.  We were on our way to Texas where my memories were of being refused to use the washroom when we stopped to buy gas in 1932 when Dad took us to meet the rest of our family. I cried because I went to see Emmitt Till as he lay tortured and disfigured in a coffin on the south side of Chicago. I cried because of Martin and Malcolm and Medgar. I cried because my cousin’s barbershop was firebombed in the ‘50’s because he was encouraging Americans of African descent to register to vote. I cried because of the four little innocent girls attending Sunday school never came home because the church was bombed by hateful, cloaked, inhumane savages who did not value life if the skin color was brown. I cried because of Viola Luizizoo. I cried because of Cheyney, Swerner and Goodman. I cried because I witnessed from afar the hosing and dog attacks on the Edmund Pettis Bridge where American citizens with dark skin were merely trying to assert their humanity and their citizenship. I cried for all who survived the Middle Passage only to be brutalized and sometimes castrated.  The family values were not respected for slaves; and families' ties were broken with husbands and wives being sold separately as slaves. I cried because at one time in our history slaves were not allowed to learn to read and write. I cried for our new President who had to endure such meanness and ugliness, especially during the last phases of his candidacy where people were whipped up and were incited and invited to be violent. 

Now I saw a young scholar who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University as the president of the venerated Harvard Law Review, who had mastered the King’s English like few had before him. President-Elect Barack Obama put the lit back in literate. I knew that never again would Americans be dumbed down by inferior, ill-equipped and outmoded and understaffed schools where supplies were short and outdated. Because President-Elect Barack Obama appreciates and understands the value of education, our country will prepare children who can converse and compete with students everywhere.

President-elect Obama embodies all of a philosophical poem which I wrote in 1974, “No Place Is Big Enough To House My Soul.”  Written in 5 parts, Part I were The Statements, Part II were The Questions, Part III were The Facts, Part IV were The Concerns and Part V was called The Challenge, in which I talked about the world’s people coming together to solve our common problems….. “We must band together man to man to find answers to our problems at hand. We must convene and discuss and pool our brainpower from all corners of the globe. We must talk and then listen and give an ear to the voices of people from every land. Until we have found cures for diseases, we must collectively continue to probe. We must judge each person by his character and especial quality; and, not be blinded by his speech or by the external color of his skin.  We must guarantee freedom and his right for justice and perfect liberty.  Our job is yet incomplete; therefore, to finish it, we must hurry to begin to recognize that what we want for ourselves, the other man wants just the same.  Each man must be given wide berth and the chance to develop to his fullest potential. We must reflect and comprehend the cruciality, for we are not just playing a game. Realizing that our task at hand, though difficult, really is not monumental. Let’s remember too, that our future depends upon our young who are the bulwark of our next generation.  Therefore, we must resolve never again to study war. We must forever lay down our arms.  We have been mandated by HIM, to try to understand and to have peace across each nation. We then must strive to be citizens of the world, each endowed with all its charms.  That day will come, ‘til then, NO PLACE IS BIG ENOUGH TO HOUSE MY SOUL.”

This day, America came into its own and has become the mature nation that it is capable of being.  We will chart a new course, one of inclusion, acceptance, and tolerance and we will elevate ourselves to become our better selves as President-elect Obama has asked us to do.

I believe there will be an emphasis on educating our children to take their rightful roles on the world’s stage and America will become America again.  No longer will we be defined by the world’s people as arrogant, intolerant and disrespectful of the ethnicity, the race, the culture, the religion, the mores, the customs and traditions of the world’s people. Because we all inhabit this planet, President Obama promises to preserve the planet, provide employment for those willing to work, rebuild our infrastructure, present each child a world-class education, improve or revise and revitalize our health care system, and pay homage to those who have served to protect us by assuring that they have the medical care and the opportunity to reenter civilian life with dignity.

This historical election of the first American of African descent is America’s finest hour; and, I am so proud to have lived to see the fulfillment of the promise of America. The healing has begun and we will all be better off because of it.  As we ascend Jacob’s ladder, we can all look upward to heaven while we create our heaven right here on earth. 

Editor’s note: Helen L. Burleson is Doctor of Administration and lives in Olympia Fields, IL. She can be reached by e-mail at hburl1229@aol.com.