One woman’s story who was there for the event.
January 20, 2009 was a day of rewriting and redefining possibilities in America. It was a day of triumph and celebration, of sacrifice and tears. A beautiful black family, full of love and no stranger to hard times, will enter the history books as 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, begins his journey as Head of State.
I initially did not want to go to the inauguration. I planned to go to D.C. the day before to see good friends who live in the city and reunite with college friends; but watching Obama enter office didn’t really lodge into my brain as something to do. When I told a friend of mine over the phone my plans for MLK Monday (and my non-existent plans for the next day), she was pissed at me.
“You’d come up here to visit your friends, but you don’t want to see history?!”
“Well,” I replied, “when you put it that way… nope.”
“Girl, you’d better get your head right. If you want to stay with me while you’re here, let me know.”
“I’ll think about it,” I smirked.
“I can’t believe you!”
After we disconnected I noticed a lot of emails and tweets to meet up with fellow bloggers while in D.C. or in Baltimore, and I became more and more turned off. I am not a social butterfly, and I felt fearful that I would make poor company. I shut myself away from all the solicitations until the Sunday before inaugural. Sunday changed everything.
My grandmother was still in rehabilitation at the time (she’s home now, and able to walk and climb steps moderately well). I went to visit her along with my mother, and she was waiting patiently for live concert coverage from the Lincoln Memorial. We watched Anderson Cooper interview a black family from New Orleans, and then she decided she wanted to sit in her wheelchair.
After three minutes and refusing assistance, she made her way from the bed to her wheelchair with confidence. She faced me and asked if I planned to watch inauguration.
Ignoring my mother’s glare, I told her I had been thinking about going. I told her I planned to see friends Monday, and a friend offered to let me stay at her place Tuesday. “I guess it would be a good thing to see…”
She smiled and agreed. “It would be good. I remember when Dr. King came to Detroit, and I left your mom and the kids with George [my grandfather] and went to see him. He appeared before a packed arena, and the overflow crowd sat outside on the ground to hear him. You could hear a pin drop while his voice came in through the speakers.” My smile matched hers. “I would not stay away. Young people always had to take to the streets. It was dangerous, crowded — sure — but you couldn’t keep them away.”
I nodded. Going to D.C. Tuesday was looking more appealing. The subject shifted to portion control and weight loss and, inevitably, to history.
My grandmother started describing a day in the cotton fields as a little girl growing up in the South, in the late 1930s/early 1940s. The truck drove around to the different houses, picking up workers to pick cotton all day, around 7 a.m. Before leaving, you always had a big breakfast because you’d spend most of the day burning it off.
If you were a kid, you received a bag about 5 feet wide and 10 feet long. Made of burlap, canvas — a thick, heavy material — and you’d have the strap wrapped around your shoulder and chest. There were no such things as break times; often a man would ride around on a horse and make sure everyone continued to work. If you stopped, you didn’t get paid.
Sometimes you got lucky: the cotton plants would grow high, and you wouldn’t have to bend over to pick it. Sometimes you weren’t so lucky, and you’d work on your knees from sun-up to sundown. The worst days were the days where the dew would coat the cotton plants and the field, with low-growing crops. You’d have to wade your way through the mud, feeling it squish beneath your knees. When the midday sun hit, you had the chance to wipe it off your pants as it dried.
Midday sun above your head — noon — was also the clarion call to lunch. How lunch operated depended on whose field you worked that day. Some fields had general stores, where you could buy Vienna sausages, pork and beans, sardines and eat them within the half-hour window before hitting the fields again. Others would have nice owners whose wives and children would ask the cook to prepare something small for the workers on the field. After you ate, you resumed picking cotton until the sun went down. Pay collected for the household, truck drops you home.
With a smile, my grandmother said, “You don’t really recognize history as you living it; it’s only after you think about it… of course we could eat heavier meals! We weren’t sitting still all of the time.” I smiled and nodded, and she told me about the process they took for washing clothes before the washing machine.
Thank God for Whirlpool. You know how sometimes people minimize the fact that women of color often serve as washing women and cleaning ladies for middle- to upper-class families, as if vacuums and Swiffers and Whirlpool and Tide were around forever? Well, let’s just say for washing and ironing clothes alone, there were more than 20 different steps to the process — including retrieving wood for a fire and water for the washtub and cleaning pot. My grandmother outlined every step, and those steps went for every piece of clothing, from the small handkerchiefs to the heavy handmade quilts. My eyes began to glaze over. Clearly I would have been the dirty, embarrassing family member. (No, I wouldn’t have. Slovenliness wasn’t allowed back then, especially not under my great- and great-great grandmothers’ watches.)
My grandmother lived to cook and eat delicious homegrown and homemade feasts, to literally burn the midnight oil with her kerosene lamp while in school, to sit outside and listen to King speak. My grandmother scrapbooked black firsts — like the first black pilot to own and fly his plane. My grandmother, understandably, is overrun with Obama paraphrenalia because she was absolutely delighted to live to see the first black president. A big first, and a very memorable one.
So nothing could keep me from D.C. by that point. I traveled via the MARC commuter train from Baltimore that Monday. I very nearly missed my train, in fact. Huge lines clogged the Amtrak ticket window — but luckily, I was one of the brave souls who could use the kiosk for a quick purchase. I hit D.C. a little before noon, and spent a great day exploring Georgetown and DuPont Circle with my college friends. Huge pizza slices, splurging on Belgian and Swiss Truffles (great for side orders of depression post-Inaugural, let me tell you what), and laughing as my friends hovered around the Big Penis Book at Lambda Rising (an excellent LGBTQQI book haven) — we had so much fun.
Also on that day, a 420 marijuana legalization and pro-Bush impeachment group hosted a huge to-do in the middle of Dupont Circle, to wishing Bush a fond farewell. Or, should I say, Bushnocchio. A variety of different shoes rested at ol’ Dubya’s feet. I threw a few (and may have missed and hit actual people in the crowd — sorry!) and my friends started up a rousing cheer of “na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!”
The cameraman filming the shoe throwing event thought we were American Idol quality and taped us singing it, telling us that there were plans to send the footage overseas. I may be more than net famous, y’all! And believe me, there’s no better feeling than clipping a faux-Bush on the shoulder with a clog. After that event, I realized we were not only there to welcome our first black president, but also to say farewell to one of the worst misunderestimated jackasses in history. I knew by that point I’d made the right decision about coming.
You don’t recognize history until after you’ve lived it.
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