With Obama Win, Elation and a Lingering Divide

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Celebration in Harlem

A center of black culture and history, the New York neighborhood of Harlem welcomed the news that Barack Obama had been elected the first black president with a loud celebration.

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While there was joy and pride in some quarters, there was dismay and resignation in others. There was also the sense that, for all the campaign rhetoric of reaching across the aisle, many partisan divisions remain -- and may have even hardened.

In Houston last night, the Obama victory produced a picture of gloom in some quarters.

At the Westin Galleria, a luxury hotel in a luxury mall in one of the most reliably red states in the union, a Republican Victory Party was hardly that.

The room was alive with politics. Prosperous-looking men in blue shirts and striped ties milled beside women in elaborate coifs and brittle looks.

"It's going to be very painful," Charles Leff, 81, said of an Obama win. He added: "I never would've believed it. Not in my lifetime."

Pat Well, another Republican, said: "This is a very sad night. I think we made some mistakes over the past eight years. We forgot, I think, whence we came. We came out of nowhere 20 years ago to build a party, and people forgot what it takes to build a party."

"There's a lot of pain out there," she said. "It's like the ship is sinking and all the unwilling passengers are going down with it."

Back in Harlem, as state after state fell Obama Blue, the community erupted in celebration, music and chants of "Yes, we can!"

In bars, in soul food restaurants, in impromptu street gatherings and at Harlem's main plaza in front of the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, residents followed the returns on televisions and a huge outdoor screen.

At Sylvia's Also, a well-known lounge, there was clapping and cheering at 7 p.m. when CNN called Vermont the first state for Obama.

The crowd at Sylvia's Also, like the one at the plaza, was mostly black but mixed with whites, Latinos and Asians -- and many journalists, chronicling the results of this historic election.

When the first big round of state projections came out for Obama at 8, a massive roar went out through the lounge. The disc jockey interrupted the broadcast to play the old Staple Singers song "I'll Take You There."