Thoughts on Inauguration Day

This is a day I thought I would have to wait until I was old and gray with one foot in the grave before witnessing. A black man leading one of the greatest nations in the world. To think when I was a child we were finally breaking the final bonds of segregation. The Voting Rights Act was signed when I was four. I was seven soon to be eight when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. Carl B Stokes was the first black man elected mayor of a major city when I was 8, 9 years old. (Cleveland rocks!) And the list goes on. These were the people who paved the road for today's phenomenal and historic event.

It saddens me that my father did not live to see this day, a day that he and others fought long and hard for in the not so distant past. It brings to tears to my eyes to think about it. He was one of those who had to suffer through a segregated military. A member of a desegregated unit, yet when travelling via bus he was forced to sit in the back and when eating in southern restaurants, turned away or forced to sit in the "Colored" section. Mind you this was a black man who willingly enlisted instead of being drafted into the armed forces and he was treated as though he were less than human. Yet this man that some considered less than a man graduated from high school at the age of 16, was the ONLY child out of 7 to go to college and GRADUATE, earned a masters degree while raising a family, went on to teach at the college level and founded one of the FIRST Black studies programs in the nation (if not the first).

Yeah I had to work today and unfortunately my little first graders really don't care to much about watching an inauguration regardless of how historic, so I couldn't exactly watch it with them in my room. You know those little types: love to move and contort their minute bodies in ways unimaginable. Just thinking about it makes me wince! So we sang, danced and played. That's what we do in music class. I came home and watched the some of the parade. And what little I watched today will be the extent of my "inauguration" participation.

So I close with this, regardless of who you voted for in November, you probably can't help but get caught up in this event because of its mere historical significance. If you are hoping that Obama can rescue us out of this mess, warning: He is a MAN, not God... and miracles are God's department.