Finally!
the official nomination of Barack Obama marks a seminal point in our history
2008-08-28
By Del Walters

Denver’s democrats breathed a long overdue sigh of relief as the long nightmare of the primary without end finally came to a close, and it took the other Clinton to make it happen.  Bill Clinton nailed it, delivering a speech that served to both heal the wounds produced by a bruising primary and launch a vicious assault on John McCain in the process.  When it was all over, history was made, the party was unified and the democrats finally turned their attention away from themselves and toward their true adversaries, the republicans.

Before that, however, was history, and it began, in all places, with the state of Alabama. It was Alabama that began the process to place the name of Barack Obama into nomination and into the nation’s history books as this country’s first ever African American to represent a major democratic party. With the votes of those delegates the ghosts of Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman, and all of the others who lived and died in the name of civil rights…smiled. In fact they probably celebrated!  The dream lived, and for that brief moment, was realized inside the Pepsi Center in Denver. There were tears, and cheers and grown, hardened journalists freely admitting that for the first time it was almost impossible not to be emotional as the moment unfolded before their eyes.  I was one of those journalists. 

“I’m here first to support Barack Obama,” President Clinton proclaimed bringing the crowd to its feet. “Barack Obama is the man for this job,” he continued.  Bill Clinton then put to rest many of the representations his wife Hillary made during the party’s bruising primary. “Republicans said I was too young…and too inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief- sound familiar? It didn’t work in 1992 because we were on the right side of history, and it won’t work in 2008 because Barack Obama is on the right side of history!”

Juan Peterson watching from her home in Northern Virginia reacted this way to Bill Clinton’s speech.  “Bill said all the right things to support Obama and promote his own legacy. And it was all delivered with that endearing smile that makes you want to jump on the bandwagon. Bill has been and is still the consummate President.”

“Finally,” was still the one quote I kept hearing over and over again.  It was as if a party of destiny was doing everything possible to deny destiny and its place in history.  Those present were sorely afraid to celebrate the moment that, this time, America finally got it right, for fear that celebrating the nation’s first black Democratic Nominee would somehow alert the masses that the man accepting the nomination was black. 

“First we have to win,” Michael Brown told me, “Then we can celebrate.”  Brown, unlike others here had a different perspective. His father Ron made history as the first African American head of the Democratic National Committee. “Dad always said you have to win first,” he continued. “Then you get to celebrate.”   Maybe, but I am sure that Ron Brown was smiling. So many of those who gathered here to watch history being made, forgot history is color blind, or at least it is supposed to be.

“His life is a 21st Century incarnation of the American dream,” Bill Clinton told the crowd…again to thunderous applause. “His achievements are proof of our continued progress toward the “more perfect union” of our founders’ dreams,” he continued. Bill Clinton was not afraid of history. It was being made at that moment, inside that hall. Neither was Senator Joe Biden.

“I watched how he touched people,” Biden told the crowd, speaking of Barack Obama. “Millions of Americans have been knocked down.  And this is the time as Americans, together, we get back up.  Our people are too good, our debt to our parents and grandparents too great, our obligation to our children is too sacred.”  Joe Biden realized that Martin’s dream for America included all Americans of all hues and, he realized, the American dream too is in jeopardy.

The breath that was being held here is the collective breath of a society that has seen that dream slip away over the last seven years.  The income of most American households is shrinking.  Many of those households are now threatened with foreclosure. We are embroiled in a war launched under false pretenses.  Check that…we are now embroiled in a war that was launched with a lie. While most Americans grow poorer, multi-national companies like Exxon Mobil, and Halliburton grow richer. The American dream of a gold watch at retirement is no more. Thousands losing their jobs in a single day is no longer news. Neither are the deaths and arrests of young black men in our urban corridors.  So much has changed. 

“Folks remember when the world used to trust us? When they looked to us for leadership?” Everyone knew who Joe Biden was talking about…and everyone knew why. “Our greatest presidents from Abraham Lincoln., to Franklin Roosevelt to John Kennedy, they all challenged us to embrace change.  Now it’s our responsibility to meet that challenge.”

I watched as an elderly black man, a Korean War vet just like my father, wiped away the tears as he left  the arena. “I never thought I would live to see this day,” he told me. Because my father served in that war I knew the discrimination he faced. I knew that like so many black soldiers he returned to restrooms, restaurants and theaters with signs outside that read “whites only”  I knew what that moment meant to him.  I knew what it meant to my father. He too never thought he would live to see this day. 

As an African American journalist, how do you write the story of  an historic moment that means so much to your people…your mother, father, sister, brother, neighbors and friends?  How do you put to paper the words that describe a pivotal moment in this country that for once signals that America is truly the melting pot so many envisioned, and not the sum of our separate but unequal parts so many see?  For one night, in one city, and I suspect in living rooms and bedrooms across the country, the nation smiled knowing that what makes this country truly different than the rest of the world was on display in Denver.  A black man, embracing a white man, with the support of a white woman, and another white man, all took center stage to fight to make Martin’s dream live. On that night, on that stage, America was finally colorblind, and the crowd loved it.  Somewhere Martin must have been smiling!  Forty five years after his famous “I have a dream” speech, that dream came one step closer to reality!  Tonight, as Barack Obama accepts his party’s nomination and delivers the keynote address, that dream will be one step closer still.

Del Walters is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter, journalist and filmmaker.