November 4, 2008

It's one time I will happily say (and will write the post on November 5 if it plays out) I was wrong about an issue. I've always told friends that I believed the United States was too obstinately racist to ever put in my lifetime an African-American man in the Oval Office. I've always believed for that reason the first African-American president would be a woman rather than an African-American man.

Monica Roberts, October 1, 2008

I wrote that in advance of the November 2008 presidential election. I'm still smiling a year later. Today marks the one year anniversary of President Obama's historic election as president of the United States.

I won't forget what I was doing the night I heard the historic network calls that he had passed the magic 270 electoral votes with the close of polls in California, Oregon and Washington state.

I remember my eyes welling up with tears as I watched the spontaneous celebrations that erupted in Louisville, Washington DC, cities all around the United States, across the globe and especially in his father's Kenyan homeland.

For the first time in a long while, African descended people here in the United Sates and across the Diaspora stood a little taller as our hearts swelled with pride over the fact that an African descended man was going to run the most powerful country on the planet.

I came home from work that night and gleefully wrote the 'Yes We Did' post I'd promised to do if he was elected.

It's been full of historic firsts such as selecting the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in Sonia Sotomayor.

There have been trying times as well for President Obama, but he has the country moving in the right direction as we approach the end of his first year in office in January.