The Night We Made History

There is nothing that I can say or write that will compare to some of the things that I have heard or read over the past couple of days since Sen. Obama became president-elect. I was particularly touched by Thomas Friedman's piece in the New York Times the morning after the election called “Finishing Our Work.” Friedman talked about how long and how far we have come since the end of the Civil War. He wrote, “For nothing more symbolically illustrated the final chapter of America’s Civil War than the fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia – the state that once exalted slavery and whose secession from the Union in 1861 gave the confederacy both strategic weight and its commanding general - voted Democratic, thus assuring that Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States.” Just the thought of that makes my heart skip a beat.

On Tuesday night, election night, I was located in Times Square at the Nasdaq Marketsite. I interviewed many executives, athletes, politicians and strategists, including Sir Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP, Mark Morial, the president and CEO of the National Urban League and former Mayor of New Orleans, Jay Feely, the kicker for the New York Jets and part-time wealth manager, Clinton's former top Fundraising Chairman Hassan Nemazee, you name it, they were there. Also in the room were close friends, colleagues and family members. My husband invited them without telling me. It was such a great surprise. He knew that the past six months required endless hours, many sacrifices, missed moments to see friends and loved ones and that much of the hard work would culminate on that night. It was a night that I’ll never forget. 

We didn’t know it at the time, perhaps we had a gut feeling, but we didn’t want to say it out loud to one another. We would witness history together. Times Square that night was the equivalent of Grant Park in Chicago. The streets were mobbed. It looked like New Year’s night. The screens were flush with election night coverage, the enthusiasm, the energy, the desire for change was palpable. As Pennsylvania and then Ohio were called, you could hear the crowds cheering, knowing that no Republican President had ever won without Ohio. The math was all but certain but the crowds feared an upset. At 11pm all of the networks called the race and the crowds began cheering. It still gives me chills. Many of us wanted to cry, hug each other, reflect, scream, jump for joy and most did it with perfect strangers. It had that eerie feeling of September 11th all over again but this time it wasn’t the nightmare that we lived through, it was the dream we hoped for. 

I have often talked about how proud I am to have grown up in the melting pot that is New York City. My three sons have never known what color is and never will. To them there is no difference. As I often say in this blog and on my show, my children are colorblind. Sure, my oldest son Logan arrived home from school the next day and said, “Mom, we elected our first African American president last night.” Did he know what that meant? No. The great irony, as Thomas Friedman wrote that next morning, is that the “Buffet effect” countered the supposed “Bradley effect.” People went to the polls and voted for the man, the vision, the desire to see change, not the color of his skin.

My proudest moment in this election was listening to my children talk about it. I can’t tell you how many parents have echoed the same sentiments. The schools, which often get berated for not doing enough or doing the wrong thing, did a phenomenal job educating our youth. Some nights I’d arrive home to a lesson in American political history. My husband and I would turn to each other, look at our sons and listen with pride as they spoke so passionately about this election. We could see the twinkle in their eyes as they recounted pieces of history. Not to mention the record number of parents who felt the patriotic duty to bring their children to the voting booths. Somehow we felt they needed to understand how voting worked on THIS DAY more than any other.  

I remember watching now President-elect Obama, Michelle Obama, Sasha and Malia stand behind those two archaic voting booths in Chicago. I was on television at the time. We talked over those live pictures for a half hour. New York Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks sat beside me in studio and we talked about the historic notion of seeing a black man vote for his name at top of the ballot for the highest executive office in the country. It seemed all the more meaningful having a black Congressman sit next to me as I watched his face light up with pride. I was so taken by the moment. I couldn’t help but feel that I was witnessing history. I watched as millions of other people did. You could see the senator wipe a tear from his eye as he held his face down. Just one day prior, his grandmother, who helped raise him, died. You could tell that he wanted to cherish that moment. So did I.

Many months ago, during the Reverend Wright controversy, Senator Obama gave a speech on race. It was back on March 18th. I remember emailing my producers and talking to my family about the speech. I believed it was the speech that defined his campaign and would eventually lead him to the White House. Here is just one of the highlights of that speech:

“I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.”

 His presidency will not be easy. The road ahead will be paved with bumps, in some cases potholes, but if he can take some of what he said in that acceptance speech and convince each and every one of us as he did on that night, that “this is our chance to answer that call,” perhaps we will embrace his call to action and accept his faith in us to say, “Yes we can.” 

If you want to read his speech on race relations on March 18t you can get it here.