Great
Day
Great
Day! The Righteous marchin',
God's
gwine build up Zion's walls.
--African-American
spiritual
View
north to Constitution Ave from the Washington Monument
(White
House in the center background, straight line above the white cap,
foreground)
(reprinted
under fair educational, non-commercial use)
After the swearing-in at the
US Capitol, the day ended early for some. The official inaugural
parade route along Pennsylvania Avenue closed off early, and many on
the mall were unable to find positions along the streets to see the
parade. I tried to thread my way to Pennsylvania Avenue along the
side streets and back routes, but at every turn, I was thwarted by
security (national guard in camouflage) and street closings. I
settled for seeing the parade on giant screens that Best Buy set up
in Constitution Hall, a concert and performance venue owned by the
Daughters of the American Revolution. Marian Anderson, one of
America's great soprano singers who broke the color barrier at New
York's Metropolitan Opera in, was denied the use of the Hall for a
concert in 1937 because of her skin color. Eleanor Roosevelt helped
arrange for Ms. Anderson's concert to be held in front of the Lincoln
memorial. She performed on Easter Sunday.
Mahalia
Jackson, one of the most powerful and moving voices of the 20th
century, performed How I got Over in 1963, for a quarter
million people on the mall, just before Dr. King spoke to those
gathered, in his words, for the greatest demonstration for freedom
in the history of our nation. (Ms. Jackson sang Precious Lord
at Dr. King's funeral.)
On Tuesday for the ceremony,
the daughter of a Detroit Baptist preacher, Aretha Franklin, sang My
Country 'Tis of Thee. Her gray felt hat with a rhinestoned
enormous bow added sparkle and high style to an occasion that
required the dialed-back elegance that Michelle Obama's ensemble
expressed. But Aretha faced no such limitations. Her singing and her
style both expressed the exuberance of the crowd and captured the
glory of the moment. Her craft did not upstage Michelle Obama. It
paid tribute to the Obamas and the country by courageously giving up
the personal whoop we all felt. That hat honored Michelle and
Barackand America--by its shining glory.
Leaving
the mall in the crowd drifting to out of the fenced perimeter was a
moment of perhaps the most profound epiphany of the day. I noticed
the crowds were not gleefully celebrating the day's excitement and
history. They were walking calmly, delighted and jubilant, but
without the dancing, or stepping, or open reverie that informs most
important achievements. What weighed their hearts? Relief. I suddenly
realized this crowd was collectively relieved.
They
were relieved because a broad part of their unspoken agenda was
Barack Obama's safety. I still fall apart when I recall my first
recognition that these 1.8 million adults and children had traveled
to this city to stand shoulder to shoulder, to watch the Jumbotrons
not only to witness the oath of office, but to also take personal and
physical responsibility for keeping Barack Obama safe. On its face,
it seems irrational. Millions were spent for thousands to provide
security. But the sheer force of will by those gathered was like an
intense shield. The power of its good will was also an armour, and no
evil or harm would penetrate or thwart the collective will this day.
Their silent prayers, their personal witness, their inner strength
would see Barack Obama sworn insafely. And once that goal was
achieved, they left the mall with a quiet satisfaction.
It
was marvelous and striking to raconteur the people who gathered to
celebrate this day, a day made historic in part by the individual
decisions that assembled the mantle of collective purpose. I suspect
it was a little like the caravans and pilgrimages arriving and
leaving the shrines and trading posts of the ancient world's Silk
Road. At a time when an inhospitable environment and hostile
communities separated and divided East and West, the Silk Road trade
routes flourished by gathering hardy souls to establish world centers
of trade and art along its stops.
In
a different way, the mood of the day is a little of what I have
experienced hiking sections of the Appalachian Trial. There are
special times when the color of sunlight, the feel of the air, the
sight of welcome strangers seem to affirm the timeless will.
The
milling parade of people brought back memories from earlier times. As
a youth, I marched in both black and white homecoming parades in
southern towns as a member of both black and white high school
marching bands, playing and sweating along main streets that were
segregated by black and white. My own marching feet broke some of
those barriers. I was the among the students who integrated the local
white high school. During Christmas Parades, I recall the scrowl of
displeased onlookers and the delight and joy in the faces of others,
who waved and offered praise.
On
January 1st of this year, I marched in the country's
oldest Emancipation Day parade. with a legion of friends and
supporters who made up the Obama contingent, led by a wonderful float
of white terraces. I greeted and waved to many friends and people in
the standing crowd as I marched. This day I paced Charleston streets
only 75 miles from Georgetown, a coastal rice port where a paternal
ancestor of Michelle Obama had once been forced into slavery, sold,
and held as chattel.
This
day I was marching only 75 miles from the site of the country's very
first Emancipation celebration. That historic first celebration began
midnight, January 1, 1863, at Hilton Head, SC. African-American
soldiers of the USCT SC V (United States Colored Troops, South
Carolina Volunteers) celebrated with speeches, songs, and a barbecue
on the plantation site of John Joyner Smith.
Lt.
Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, of Boston (and later confidant of
Emily Dickinson) records the earliest January 1st
emancipation celebration, at Hilton Head, SC, in his book of memoirs,
Army Life in a Black Regiment.
The
services began at half past eleven o'clock, with prayer by our
chaplain . . . Then the President's Proclamation was read by Dr. W.
H. Brisbane, a thing infinitely appropriate, a South Carolinian
addressing South Carolinians; for he was reared among these very
islands, and here long since emancipated his own slaves. Then the
colors were presented to us by the Rev. Mr. French, a chaplain who
brought them from the donors in New York. . . Then followed an
incident so simple, so touching, so utterly unexpected and startling,
that I can scarcely believe it on recalling; it gave the keynote to
the whole day. Just as I took and waved the flag, suddenly arose,
close beside the platform, a strong male voice (but rather cracked
and elderly), into which two women's voices instantly blended,
singing, as if by an impulse --
"My Country, 'tis of
thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing!"
People
looked at each other to see whence came this interruption, not set
down in the bills. Firmly and irrepressibly the quavering voices sang
on, verse after verse; others of the colored people joined in; some
whites on the platform began, but I motioned them to silence. I never
saw anything so electric; it made all other words cheap; it seemed
the choked voice of a race at last unloosed. Nothing could be more
wonderfully unconscious; art could not have dreamed of a tribute to
the day of jubilee that should be so affecting; history will not
believe it; and when I came to speak of it, after it was ended, tears
were everywhere. If you could have heard how quaint and innocent it
was! Old Tiff and his children might have sung it; and close before
me was a little slave-boy, almost white, who seemed to belong to the
party. Just think of it!--the first day they had ever had a country,
the first flag they had ever seen which promised anything to their
people, and here, while mere spectators stood in silence, waiting for
my stupid words, these simple souls burst out in their lay, as if
they were by their own hearths at home! When they stopped, there was
nothing to do for it but to speak, and I went on; but the life of the
whole day was in those unknown people's song.
A
hundred and forty-six years later, 1.8 million of the nation gathered
along the national mall on January 20th, standing in the subfreezing
temperatures of a bright winter day, stretched from the terraces of
the US Capitol to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, to witness the
exchange of power they sanctioned by their votes. They came to
witness the administration of the 35 word oath that would make Barack
Obama the country's 44th President. On that day, the
unknown people's song was made real and wonderful in the spoken word.
God
bless America.
