Obama always made it clear that his candidacy was not about race.  He often seemed at pains to avoid the issue or dismiss its impact, while all along the country was whispering about it.  But for many people the fact that Barack Obama is black is extraordinary.  It may not be the reason people voted for him, but it is a reason that people celebrated last night.

I watched the election returns surrounded by my wife and the three college students that are staying with us.  These three teenagers grew up in a small town in the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest areas in the country.  Their town was about 20 miles from where Emmit Till was tortured and killed, 15 miles from the home of Medger Evers’ murderer and about 20 minutes from the place where both of those trials ended in aquittals.

They live in one of the most racist and segregated regions of our country.  The schools were not integrated until the early seventies and when they were, the white students, overnight, abandoned the public schools to form all white private academies.  In many cases, the all white school boards that controlled the public schools sold all of the text books to the academies for a few dollars.

In this area, the white community is universally middle class and upper middle class with many plantation owners still pulling in profits in the millions each year.  With the exception of a few teachers, the black community is all living in poverty.  There is no black middle class.  The few jobs that are available consist of gutting fish for minimum wage at the catfish factory, or working at one of the few fast food joints in town. 

All of the grandparents can tell you about picking cotton by hand and I still had a few students that would pick around the edges of the field during harvest time for a few dollars.  This is an area that has not changed a whole lot in the last 50 years.

Yesterday, I was talking with Jessie and he was commenting about some of the differences between here and Mississippi.  He said that he didn’t like that people were less friendly here.  If you say hello to someone, they don’t necessarily say hello back.  But he also marveled at how white people and black people get along up here.

“In Mississippi the only white people I ever talked to were my teachers and up here it’s like it’s no big deal.”

Throughout the election, they kept asking me if I really thought Obama had a chance to win.  They had truly bought into the idea that there was no way white America would let a black man become president.  Even last night while watching the election returns, they kept asking me. “You really think he can do it?”

I took them all to vote yesterday.  It was their first presidential election.  For two of them, it was their first time voting ever.  They went over to the little touch screen cubbies, cast their vote and wore their “I voted” stickers with pride. 

Last night they sat around the living room, and watched for hours as each state flipped to one color or another.  I showed them the electoral map and explained the projections for each state.  I explained the significance of Pennsylvania going for Obama.  I explained how it would be virtually impossible for Obama to lose at that point, but until they saw the words, printed large on the screen, “Barack Obama will be President,” I don’t know if they really believed it was possible. 

They came from a place where the schools are actively segregated, even though white people live a few blocks away.  They live in homes with people who can tell about being prohibited from voting.  They have grandparents who can remember the day that the community swimming pool was filled in with dirt, rather than have it become integrated.  They were alive in 1995 when Mississippi finally ratified the 13th amendment freeing the slaves.  And they were there, sitting on a couch in a white neighborhood, watching the election results pour in as they saw that their vote had helped to elect a black man to become president.

 I know that this election is not about race.  And only the naïve or the ignorant will believe that this in any way solves the problems that have been formed by centuries of oppression, and racism.  But for three young adults from the Mississippi Delta who are working hard to change their own futures, last night they saw Barack Obama become the leader of the free world.  And after a lifetime of society telling them no,  they heard a black man – the new president of the United States – tell them:

“Yes we can.”