Last night, I got to hear my father cry, out loud, for the first time in my life. I'm still prone to fits of crying spells from what happened within my family. I didn't comment or post here last night, mainly because I was still overcome with...well. everything.
Every one of my nine siblings ( 2 of whom are my cousins my parents took in and raised, and 1 whom was a teenager when my parents adopted her after my older sister, then a social worker, brought her home for dinner one night and we decided as a family we didn't want her to ever leave) cried, calling each other, shouts of joy mixed with overwhelming relief.
From the Delaware News Journal:
Delaware held out for 32 years before joining other states in ratifying black residents' right to vote.
Former Dover City Councilman William H. Daisey, that body's first minority member, said he remembers working in chicken-processing plants with black men who had earned master's degrees -- yet that was the only job they could get.
"I never thought I'd live to see this," said Daisey, 77. "I really didn't."
When PA got called for Obama, my father told me he was so proud of me for spending the weeks I had there, for driving elderly people to the polls and talking to people even when they treated me with contempt or hostility. This means a lot to me. I remember when my father was the first minority elected to City Council in the town where I grew up. I remember the police visiting our house because he had received death threats and frightening phone calls. I remember asking him not to 'take the job' because I was afraid, and I remember my mother pulling me aside and explaining why it was so important that he do it.
We all did this. All of us.
Today, while dropping off my two daughters to school in the carpool lane, a teacher I had only spoken to once ran out to my car and embraced me, crying, and I knew exactly what for. Everywhere I go, there are not so secret glances and smiles among strangers and random outbreaks of laughter and tears.
I went in to buy a newspaper with my coffee, wearing my Obama pin, and the guy at the counter looked at me and said "On the house this morning."
We lost a few battles, like Proposition 8, one that we WILL fight again and win. But we know what we can do now, and to all those feeling bittersweet about last night, I will fight even harder for your equality.
I'm fairly agnostic, but today, a little less so. I hope and perhaps even pray for nothing more than for the spirits of those who lost their lives in a different sort of war can in some way be a part of what they helped to accomplish last night.
In honor of them, a moment of reflection( Major Source, 40 lives for freedom: )
REV. GEORGE LEE, one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County, used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote.
White officials offered Lee protection on the condition he end
his voter registration efforts, but Lee refused and was murdered.
LAMAR SMITHwas shot dead on the courthouse lawn by a white man in broad daylight while dozens of people watched. The killer was never indicted because no one would admit they saw a white man shoot a
black man. Smith had organized blacks to vote in a recent election.
EMMETT LOUIS TILL, a 14-year-old boy on vacation from Chicago, reportedly flirted with a white woman in a store.
Three nights later, two men took Till from his bed, beat him, shot him, and dumped his body in the Tallahassee River. An all-white jury found the men innocent of murder.
JOHN EARL REESE, 16, was dancing in a café when white men fired shots into the windows. Reese was killed and two others were wounded. The shootings were part of an attempt by whites to terrorize blacks
into giving up plans for a new school.
WILLIE EDWARDS JR., a truck driver, was on his way to work when he was stopped by four Klansmen. The men thought Edwards was another man who they believed was dating a white woman. They forced Edwards at gunpoint to jump off a bridge into the Alabama River. Edwards’ body was found three months
later.
MACK CHARLES PARKER, 23, was accused of raping a white woman.
Three days before his case was set for trial, a masked mob took him from his jail cell, beat him, shot him, and threw him in the Pearl River.
HERBERT LEE, who worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help register black voters, was shot and killed by E.H. Hurst, a white member of the Mississippi Legislature, on September 25, 1961 in Liberty.
Lee was a father of nine children. Hurst was never charged with the crime, and black witnesses were pressured by the sheriff and others to testify that Lee tried to hit Hurst with a tire tool. They testified as ordered and Hurst was acquitted in an Amite County trial held in a room full of armed white man, the same day as the killing. Hurst never spent a night in jail.
LOUIS ALLEN, a black farmer who witnessed the murder of Lee, was later also killed. Louis tried talking to the FBI, who refused him protection, and on On January 31st, he is ambushed by persons unknown at the front gate to his property who kill him with multiple shotgun blasts.
CPL. ROMAN DUCKSWORTH JR., a military police officer stationed in Maryland, was on leave to visit his sick wife when he was ordered off a bus by a police officer and shot dead. The police officer may have mistaken Ducksworth for a "freedom rider" who was testing bus desegregation laws.
PAUL GUIHARD, a reporter for a French news service, was killed by gunfire from a white mob during protests over the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi.
WILLIAM LEWIS MOORE, a white postman from Baltimore, was shot and killed during a one-man march against segregation.
Moore had planned to deliver a letter to the governor of Mississippi urging an end to intolerance.
MEDGAR EVERS, directed NAACP operations in Mississippi.
He was leading a campaign for integration in Jackson when he was shot and killed by a sniper at his home.
ADDIE MAE COLLINS, DENISE McNAIR, CAROLE ROBERTSON and CYNTHIA WESLEY were getting ready for church services when a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing all four of the school-age girls.
Their church had been a center for civil rights meetings and marches.
VIRGIL LAMAR WARE, 13, was riding on the handlebars of his brother’s bicycle when he was fatally shot by white teenagers.
The white youths had come from a segregationist rally held in the aftermath of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing.
REV. BRUCE KLUNDER was among civil rights activists who protested the building of a segregated school by placing their bodies in the way of construction equipment.
Klunder was crushed to death when a bulldozer backed over him.
HENRY HEZEKIAH DEE and CHARLES EDDIE MOORE were killed by Klansmen who believed the two were part of a plot to arm blacks in the area. (There was no such plot.) Their bodies were found during a massive search for the missing civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.
JAMES EARL CHANEY, ANDREW GOODMAN, and MICHAEL HENRY SCHWERNER, young civil rights workers, were arrested by a deputy sheriff and then released into the hands of Klansmen who had plotted their murders.
They were shot, and their bodies were buried in an earthen dam.
LT. COL. LEMUEL PENN, a Washington, D.C., educator, was driving home from U.S. Army Reserves training when he was shot and killed by Klansmen in a passing car.
JIMMIE LEE JACKSON was beaten and shot by state troopers as he tried to protect his grandfather and mother from a trooper attack on civil rights marchers.
His death led to the Selma-Montgomery march and the eventual passage of the Voting Rights Act.
REV. JAMES REEB, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was among many white clergymen who joined the Selma marchers after the attack by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Reeb was beaten to death by white men while he walked down a Selma street.
VIOLA GREGG LIUZZO, a housewife and mother from Detroit, drove alone to Alabama to help with the Selma march after seeing televised reports of the attack at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
She was driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery when she was shot and killed by a Klansmen in a passing car.
ONEAL MOORE was one of two black deputies hired by white officials in an attempt to appease civil rights demands. Moore and his partner, Creed Rogers, were on patrol when they were blasted with gunfire from a passing car. Moore was killed and Rogers was wounded.
WILLIE BREWSTER was on his way home from work when he was shot and killed by white men. The men belonged to the National States Rights Party, a violent neo-Nazi group whose members had been involved in church bombings and murders of blacks.
JONATHAN MYRICK DANIELS, an Episcopal Seminary student in Boston, had come to Alabama to help with black voter registration in Lowndes County. He was arrested at a demonstration, jailed in Hayneville and then suddenly released.
Moments after his release, he was shot to death by a deputy sheriff.
SAMUEL LEAMON YOUNGE JR., a student civil rights activist, was fatally shot by a white gas station owner following an argument over segregated restrooms.
VERNON FERDINAND DAHMER, a wealthy businessman, offered to pay poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford the fee required to vote.
The night after a radio station broadcasted Dahmer’s offer, his home was firebombed. Dahmer died later from severe burns.
BEN CHESTER WHITE, who had worked most of his life as a caretaker on a plantation, had no involvement in civil rights work. He was murdered by Klansmen who thought they could divert attention from a civil rights march by killing a black person.
CLARENCE TRIGGS was a bricklayer who had attended civil rights meetings sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality. He was found dead on a roadside, shot through the head.
WHARLEST JACKSON, the treasurer of his local NAACP chapter, was one of many blacks who received threatening Klan notices at his job.
After Jackson was promoted to a position previously reserved for
whites, a bomb was planted in his car. It exploded minutes after he left work one day, killing him instantly.
BENJAMIN BROWN, a former civil rights organizer, was watching a student protest from the sidelines when he was hit by stray gunshots from police who fired into the crowd.
SAMUEL EPHESIANS HAMMOND JR., DELANO HERMAN MIDDLETON and HENRY EZEKIAL SMITHwere shot and killed by police who fired on student demonstrators at the South Carolina State College campus.
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., a Baptist minister, was a major architect of the civil rights movement. He led and inspired major non-violent desegregation campaigns, including those in Montgomery and
Birmingham. He won the Nobel Peace Prize.
He was assassinated as he prepared to lead a demonstration in Memphis.
JOHNNIE MAE CHAPPELL. Shelton Chappell was only four months old on March 23, 1964, when his mother, Johnnie Mae, was murdered as she walked along a roadside in Jacksonville, Fla.
Her killers were white men looking for a black person to shoot following a day of racial unrest. More than 30 years later, with the help of a local detective, Shelton’s tireless work brought his mother the recognition she deserved.
And to those unknown persons who fought in their own ways to take us to the day we have now, I give my undying gratitude. My children will live a better life because of all that these people, and people like them, sacrificed.
To those still suffering under legalized injustice, know that these battles are never won easily. Stay committed, and we will stand by your side.