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On January 20, 2009 at 12:05 p.m. on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Barrack Obama placing his hand on the Bible once owned by Abraham Lincoln, and took the Oath of Office for the United States of America. As I sat and watched this historic moment, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of unfulfilled duty, since we have a black president
I cannot overstress the significance of this moment. For the past forty years the African American community morale has been depleted thru the lost of positive leaders. In the early 50’s you could see the hope and thirst for knowledge in the eyes of so many young African Americans and a since of pride in our own culture. But upon the deaths of Marin Luther King, Malcolm X, and John F. Kennedy, this sense of hope and change that was brought up by these individuals were ripped from the people. During the next thirty years, we tried to build our own community organizations to fight the prejudice and problems we still face in our community but leaders from those affiliations never gained the same attention or even respect from the world let alone our own community. This created a rippling division in the generations of African Americans; young, old, rich, poor, light skinned, and dark skinned. Without strong leaders in our community we started to focus more on the individual, not as a collective unit. People who did not succeed in life started to piggy back off the success of others in the community. This left more and more individuals content with where they were and the glorification of the improvise hood. Now, we have a strong political figure in executive office and hopefully the minds of the individuals will become more conscious of the roles that they play in our society. We need strong role models in every state; every community and every town that can connect with the people around us, like Obama connected with the people of the world. His inauguration spoke of his up coming responsibilities, not only did he had to take part in it but, everyone who observed this joyous occasion need to be held accountable for themselves. For once I believe that the whole community is finally in agreement that we need to pull together and not criticize each other as we fashionably have done before. We are not so far gone from the day of Jim Crow that we cannot fill its grip on our thoughts. But we are closer to the day where we can stand by each other as more the black or white but as leaders trying to make this world a better place.