A Political Victory So Very Personal

With Obama's Election, 'We Have Risen to All of the Things We Always Hoped For'

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.