Senior Year 1965.

I was working a late shift election night, covering a small watch party in the home of a Ballwin resident.  As soon as CNN projected Barack Obama the president-elect my phone rang -– it was my mother, speechless.

My mother has been a history maker herself as the first of two African-Americans to integrate her high school In Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. That was a painful time in my mother’s life.  I know because she has talked with us on a number of occasions about some of her school experiences. But, never too much, as she did not want to taint our world view with her negative past experiences.  The one thing she will always share, though, was her pact with her friend to never return after graduation. And on that day, as they ran from the school building, her friend yelled, “Don’t look back, never look back.”

When she finally found her voice Tuesday night, she said, “I never thought I’d live to see the day, “

“Barack won,” she said in a tone of disbelief.