With Obama's Election, 'We Have Risen to All of the Things We Always Hoped For'
By Ovetta Wiggins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The celebration of Barack Obama's election to the presidency began early on election night and is likely to continue at least through Inauguration Day in Prince George's County, the nation's wealthiest majority-African American jurisdiction.
Democratic officials and activists had just started gathering at La Fontaine Bleu in Lanham last week to watch the election-night returns when the television commentator announced: "Obama wins Pennsylvania."
A few fists pumped in the air. Some Obama volunteers whistled. Others shouted: "Yeah! All right!"
At the end of the historic night, the dreams of those in the room and many of their constituents had become reality. The Democratic senator from Illinois was elected the nation's first African American president.
County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D), who grew up in rural South Carolina, said an "indescribable feeling" went through him when Obama's picture was displayed on the TV screen with the notation "the nation's 44th president."
"It was like someone had shocked me," he said.
Johnson, 59, said he remembered his childhood on Wadmalaw Island, S.C., where he worked in the fields, attended a segregated school and was barred from many jobs, even driving the local bus.
The first white South Carolinian he met, Johnson said, was in Tacoma, Wash., while he was serving in the Army.
"South Carolina was as divided as South Africa," Johnson said. "It was an apartheid system. To see how everything has unfolded: The restaurants opened up to us, the University of South Carolina started admitting black students, hospital boards now have black members. But oh, my God, the presidency says so much about how far we have come."
On election night, Johnson spoke with his daughter. He said they discussed how Obama's victory means that Johnson's grandson, who will turn 2 next month, will spend his earliest years knowing only a world in which the nation is governed by a black president.
"This is a transforming moment in our country's history, and it confirms all of my hopes for America," Johnson said. "This moment shows us that we have risen to all of the things we always hoped for."
It was an ending to a long campaign that many had also prayed for.
About 70 people gathered for an election-eve vigil at Faith Missionary Baptist Church in Capitol Heights.
"We are here to acknowledge that God is in charge of this," said Donna Dean, wife of County Council Chairman Samuel H. Dean (D-Mitchellville).
They sang hymns such as "Blessed Assurance" and old Negro spirituals, including "We've Come this Far by Faith." And they prayed.
"Father, we thank you for the power of prayer," the Rev. Sylvia Bell said. "As we cast our votes, we know you have already decided the outcome. Be glorified in this process. We come against any plan the enemy may have."
When the votes were counted a day later, Kenneth Battle, who has worked on Democratic campaigns most of his life, said Obama's historic victory was "icing on the cake" for him, a staunch Democrat and an African American man.
"I can wake up in the morning and feel like this country is finally living up to all of those lofty words written in the Constitution," he said.
Like their counterparts across the country, voters in Prince George's stood in lines that wrapped around their polling places. Some waited for hours.
Gerard Gonzaludo of Bowie said he was unaware of the disorder that was unfolding as he stood in line to vote at Mount Oak Church in Mitchellville. Poll workers there were dealing with malfunctioning voting machines and the large number of people who came to vote. By mid-afternoon, the county Board of Elections had to send out more equipment and staff to help check in voters.
"It was like Beltway traffic: Something happens, then the next thing you know, there's a backup," said Gonzaludo, who said he waited four hours to vote. "In this case, it was people."
Other polling places also experienced backups. Three of six voting machines were working at the Towers of Westchester Park apartment building in College Park on Election Day morning, said voter Mike Fekula, who arrived just before 7 a.m. and didn't leave until after 9 a.m.
"The wait made me more determined to vote," he said. "That's what I came there for."
Fekula said he voted for Obama and to change the state constitution to allow early voting in Maryland.
"When you've been on line that long, all of a sudden early voting looks wonderful," he said.
Not everyone had the presidential race in mind last week.
Former state senator Gloria G. Lawlah (D), Maryland's secretary of aging, sat in the county Board of Elections office last Tuesday night anxiously waiting for results on the proposed state constitutional amendment to legalize slot machine gambling. The measure passed overwhelmingly, with 59 percent of Maryland voters giving it their support, and the Prince George's vote mirrored the statewide outcome.
For months, Lawlah had campaigned in favor of the initiative, saying she supported it because some of the anticipated revenue would be dedicated to education.
"I served on the Thornton Commission," she said of the panel that studied the needs of the state's public schools. "The problem was we never found a new stream of money to pay for" education.
Staff writer Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
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