Historic nomination elicits tears, pride

DENVER — When I asked Sharon Winesberry what today means to her, she first began talking about the importance of this election, the usual political stuff. Then she started to cry.

It all came spilling out.

"I think of my African heritage, of the generations of my ancestors who were considered to be property," she said. "I think of how it wasn't that long ago we weren't even thought of as human beings.

"I think of how that door has been shut for so long. I guess I never allowed myself to think it could open. Not so wide. Not so soon."

Winesberry, a 53-year-old grandmother from Steilacoom, Pierce County, is one of thousands of African Americans here to see Barack Obama become the first black nominee for president in American history.

What they are going through I can't relate to. There have been presidents who looked like me. All of them.

So I spoke with a dozen African Americans on Wednesday, some delegates and some who made the trip here on their own. That America might now give power to a black, or mixed-race, person has been so unthinkable for so long, many blacks don't seem quite ready to comprehend it themselves.

They're euphoric. Proud. Scared. In disbelief.

Three of the 12 began crying as they talked about it.

"I thought I would die before I saw this day," said Betty Harris, 70, a "Grandmama for Obama" who lives in Seattle's Montlake neighborhood. She came to Denver for the week "to be near," but hasn't yet been able to get into the convention hall.

Harris remembers when Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984 and 1988. That stirred pride, but few thought Jackson had a chance. Pathbreaking it was, but still on the margins.

"The world wasn't ready for us then," she said. "Now it feels like maybe the world has changed. It's overwhelming."

Bessie Gratton, a Boeing retiree who lives in Seattle's Rainier Beach area, said it isn't that the lives of blacks are going to change suddenly if Obama is elected.

"I've heard some people say — well, what is he going to do for black people anyway?" she said. "It's not about black people and what they need. It's about having a black man be the leader of all the people. That takes my breath away."

Around Denver, the streets are thronged by African Americans. A quarter of the official delegates are black, the most ever for a major party convention. Plus there are an untold number like Harris and Gratton, who came here unofficially, to witness the moment.

On the streets a popular T-shirt shows a picture of Martin Luther King Jr., titled "The Dreamer." Next to it is a picture of Obama, labeled "The Dream."

That King's dream has been a dream deferred is a sad part of African-American life, said Ron Sims, the King County executive, who is here as a superdelegate. Sims, who is black, said his office recently put out a report showing that blacks in the Seattle area are worse off now, in terms of health, jobs, poverty and the like, than they were in 1970.

Nobody thinks electing a black man is going to fix that. It is a symbol, though, that King's dream was more than a speech.

"It's the sun peeking through the clouds," Sims said. We stood on the convention floor, watching as the roll call of the states officially nominated Obama. "Two hundred years of dark clouds."

I am supposed to listen to Obama's speech tonight and hear it as politics. Analyze it. Scrutinize it for what I say I want, which is for him to put some meat on the bones of his bid for the presidency.

That might be difficult.

"This is a moment that hasn't happened in the history of our country," said Winesberry, the Steilacoom grandmother. "It's a proud moment for America. How about we all come together and enjoy it?"

Danny Westneat: 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.