BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — While the notable and celebrated sat in the bright cold of Washington to hear President Obama pay homage to the "men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom," many of those very men and women were sitting here on folding chairs in an enormous, darkened concert hall.
A trip to Washington had been the plan for Robbie Revis Smith, 73, twice jailed in the 1960s for her part in the civil rights struggle. But she can barely stand up now because of a bad back. So she took the bus at 7 on an atypically frigid morning to get a front row seat at the inauguration-watching event at the Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham.
The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, the 86-year-old survivor of bombing, beatings and multiple imprisonments, is as much a part of civil rights royalty as anyone. But he had only recently gotten out of the hospital. He sat upright in his wheelchair a few feet from the stage.
And there was Colonel Stone Johnson, 90, sitting quietly in his brown pinstriped suit, his hat on his knee. He said he had done Washington anyway, many times.
"I been so much," Mr. Johnson said. "All the marches, I didn't miss none."
Across the country, at half-filled lunch counters and in Las Vegas showrooms, in break rooms and backrooms, Americans gathered to watch the rare sight of a dusty old cliché — that anyone, even a little black child, could some day be president — actually squaring up to reality. For many who continued to doubt up to the last minute that this was truly going to happen, the sight of a black man taking the oath of office seemed to be breaking news even if, technically, it was not.
And nobody, even Mr. Shuttlesworth, who was wheeled out as soon as Mr. Obama's speech was concluded, wanted to be alone as they watched this moment — which in large part began in the churches and living rooms of Birmingham.
"I started to stay at home and watch this and drink a cold beer or some champagne," said Willie Clements Sr., a burly 53-year-old former postal worker who grew up in a world of separate drinking fountains and Jim Crow. "But I got to thinking: this may not happen in my lifetime."
At that moment, Mr. Obama was preparing to be sworn in. "Excuse me, I got to make a call," Mr. Clements said. "My twin brother's watching this in Vegas."
Everywhere, people gathered. Store owners in the Bronx stole glances at television sets in backrooms in between helping customers. About a dozen Latinos stood in the lobby of a Los Angeles Y.M.C.A. watching the event.
The cars had been moved outside at the Uptown Body and Fender shop in Oakland, Calif., to make room for a projector, helium balloons, a life-size cutout of Mr. Obama and a crowd of about a hundred.
Among them was Leon Cross, a black carpet cleaner and janitor from nearby Hayward, Calif., who a couple of months ago had cast a vote for president for the first time in his 52 years. Now his Crosstown Carpet Care is offering a 44th president carpet-cleaning sale: forty-four dollars per room, which, he said, was practically giving it away.
"I'm happy to do what I can," said Mr. Cross, whose face was lined with tears by the end of Mr. Obama's speech.
All the swivel chairs at the Silver Star Barber Shop in Atlanta were turned to the television mounted high on a wall and all of the normal barbershop conversation — football, whiskey, unrealized diets — yielded to quiet at the start of the invocation.
"How you going to ask if I'm watching?" Dione McCalla, a 33-year-old bookstore owner barked into his cellphone. "Of course I'm watching."
The haircuts and trims continued throughout the ceremony, but at 12:06 pm, when Mr. Obama was introduced as "the 44th president of the United States of America," the shop fell into an even deeper hush.
Willie Edwards, sitting in the corner eating a hot dog and wearing an Obama shirt, shook his head.
"Ain't that something," he said.
But the moment did not belong to only one group, as personal as it may have felt.
"Maybe this means that someday we might see another historic day — a Hispanic president," said 27-year-old forklift driver Alex Gonzalez, one of several men gathered around a rabbit-eared television in a meeting room at a fire extinguisher plant in Elk Grove Village, Ill.
At a crowded viewing party of Inauguration Day hooky-players at the Royale, a popular bar on St. Louis's south side, Will Roth, a 61-year-old retired department manager at a grocery store, remarked on the day's meaning for gay men and lesbians "We'll finally have an ally in the White House instead of an adversary."
Even those who did not feel a personal stake in the inauguration or who opposed Mr. Obama on policy grounds remained in the company of others to watch one of the country's occasional concessions to the pomp and circumstance of royalty.
At the sparsely populated Cross Keys Diner in Republican-heavy Adams County, Pa., 83-year-old Leo Lunger, who works for his son-in-law's carwash and concrete businesses, expressed disgust for Mr. Obama's bailout plan and what he sees as a continuation of Clinton-era policies.
"You can't buy your way out of this," Mr. Lunger said. "I knew he was going to spin us blind."
But he stayed at the counter and watched the swearing-in, as the restaurant owner's wife, Vickie Saltos, an ecstatic Obama supporter, sent text messages to her daughter in Washington.
Whatever the feeling was about Mr. Obama's politics, most agreed that this one-hour ceremony marked a kind of new phase in the country's 233-year history. Few would know about that better than Florence Beatrice Stevens Smith, 104, who lives at the Heartland Health Care Center in Kendall, Fla.
The community room was already packed, with residents peeking behind walkers, when Ms. Smith entered, with a red, white and blue lei around her neck. The ceremony had begun. Although several in the room dozed peacefully, the television was turned up loud enough for people down the hall to hear it from their beds.
Ms. Smith did not say much. But an employee at the home confirmed what stories in the newspaper had said: Ms. Smith had been a typing teacher at Tuskegee University in Alabama, and her father, a former slave, had served in the Union Army.
When Mr. Obama appeared on screen and began his oath, she moved forward in her wheelchair and adjusted her glasses.
"He is really president," Ms. Smith whispered, as others in the room applauded. "That's nice."
No comments:
Post a Comment