In an hour, Barack Obama will be inaugurated. The streets are absolutely packed with spectators; they probably gave up their chance at seeing the actual inauguration in order to try and catch a glimpse of the limo coming down th estreet. This car really is a beast; it's so broad and tall it doesn't even have the elongated look of most limosines. Now the First Ladies are coming out to join the limo; Laura in gray, Michelle in gold. Michelle is about a foot taller than Laura is. One Washington person is coming out with just an overcoat over a suit; he is going to freeze to death. Reggie Love looks happy. He is going to be the body-man, the Charlie of the new administration. Al and Tipper Gore go by. He doesn't want to be energy secretary, but he'd dang well better stick around.
This whole world is confined to the little silver television on top of my tiny dresser. Here, new snow is falling on a half-melted landscape, and the world is quiet. I've only left the room twice; I just returned from the second time, dashing over a wet-mopped floor in my socks to snag a couple of newspapers. The first was to head out to the memorial.
The first experience I had of Western was reading Letters from Mississippi, a collection of the letters sent by the Freedom Riders back before they were Freedom Riders, when they were college kids who had alienated their whole families and put their lives on the line like idiots. This was the opinion of the world at large in the North; in the South, they were regarded as carpetbaggers and meddlers at best.
It's hard to think now that it was ever regarded as anything less than heroism, but Miami didn't even want to put up the memorial when it was first proposed in the 1970s. At the time, they actively tried to stop the organization of the group, but they couldn't. Western College was still its own entity, and so 800 volunteers came to Western. They sprawled on the porch of McKee and played guitars... they packed into Leonard Theatre in Peabody Hall to listen to terrifying stories from the organizers... they curled up on the floor in little teams and practiced protecting their head and neck while the rest of the group mimicked an angry mob, screaming at and beating on them. Not all of the volunteers made the Ride. Only the committed. Only the survivors. They loaded up here, on Western, and started south.In a half hour, Barack Obama will be inaugurated. I have Easy Mac spinning in the microwave. George Bush is coming down the ramp now. Poor guy. He's like the popular kid who's just been liked and easygoing enough to make it to the top, and suddenly everyone decides they don't like him. He's no different than ever. Right now, he looks brave, which is always three parts scared.
On Freedom Summer, white and black college students drove to Mississippi, scared out of their wits, mostly in order to get themselves hurt. The white ones knew that where no one cared how many black people died, they would get press for being beaten-- heck, they had to tell the press to stop following them down the highway because they didn't want to be immediately identified by the southern police. Not that it helped them much. There was just no way cars full of black and white students would blend in, there and then. Sometimes the black students hid under blankets and ducked under the windows while the white drivers bluffed their way through police stops.
Twenty minutes now. Barack Obama is walking bemusedly down the ramp, alone and surrounded by people. The crowd disappears into the background, far past the Washington Monument. What can they see from back there? If they're lucky, one of the many, many jumbotrons. People towards the front are wandering into the aisles to get a better shot. The police that have kept them clear so long are probably watching now, and they wander out like sheep, unsure if they're supposed to be there, taking a few shots quickly before they can be told "No." Now he's out, walking through the aisles, shaking hands, smiling. Is he not wearing a coat? No, it's just a thin overcoat. Good, we don't need a Harrison. The Easy Mac is burning my tongue and my Diet Coke is not very cold for some reason.
Andrew Goodman... James Cheney... Michael Schwerner. During our freshmen orientation, these names were written on the chalkboard in the corner of Leonard Theatre. I couldn't place them, and as the CLAs went over bathroom policies and dictated the hours when you could play soccer in the halls, I wondered if they were important people, from a lecture or something, or if it was just the names of students."No triumph gained by brutality could ever taint the sweetness of this hour," says Feinstein.
The names jumped out like they were written in fire the next time I read them. Turned out I was right both ways. Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner were kids who rode down to Mississippi.
"We are celebrating a hingepoint of history," says Rick Warren. He's doing ok, I think.
Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner got hassled the night after leaving Oxford, and disappeared the same night.
"Remember that we are Americans: united not by race, not by religion, not by blood, but by our commitment to freedom."
They turned up in an earthen dam.
"Thy kingdom come--thy will be done--on earth as it is in Heaven."
The memorial is an amphitheatre, with carved stone benches giving way to the uncarved rock of the hillside as you read along the headlines carved into them.
I had an argument with Mark McPhail the first time I met him about whether it read from carved to uncarved or uncarved to carved. He holds that the monument is a reference to "the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone," and quotes the builder to prove it. I've done no research. I read the monument the same way I read the headlines, left to right, earlier to later, the set events of the past leading up to the unformed future.
Joe Biden is taking the oath. The Lincoln Bible looks like it's held shut with padlocks.
There is a quartet playing Air and Simple Gifts arranged by John Williams. It is twelve, but they are behind; it is worth it. The Obamas and Bidens have to turn around in their chairs to look up to where they are playing. Yo-Yo Ma looks excited. The clarinetist is spectacular. Malia is keeping Sasha entertained down on the family chairs.
Obama has been president for four minutes without taking the oath...so if he wants to tear up the Constitution, this is his chance, I suppose.
Too late, here he comes, stifling laughter at someone's parting comment. "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear"-- they're giving him really long phrases to remember, and it can't be easy to hear, he stuttersteps a couple times. But it doesn't matter how you say it.
12:06-- Barack Obama is the President of the United States.
Here, screams reach down from the dining hall room where the TV is playing the inauguration coverage. It's not quiet here anymore. Here on the Western front.
He begins speaking. I can only pull the quotes so quickly.
"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear."
"We remain a young nation; but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to put away childish things."
The camera pans over a couple Tuskegee Airmen, wedged into the crowd. And New York City, and Los Angeles, and Atlanta.
"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
"The nation cannot prosper when it favors only the prosperous."
"To extend opportunity to every willing heart; not out of charity, but because it is the path to our greatest common good."
Muhummad Ali stands shakily to clap.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."
There's about twenty people clinging to a war monument, families, children clinging to metal horses. A parking garage is lined, every floor, with spectators.
"We are willing to extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."
Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq; about twelve soldiers sit around a boardroom table watching the television in the corner.
"The world has changed; and we must change with it."
I'm reading the benediction from the Inauguration Concert, that wasn't aired on tv.
"Please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking far too much of this one. We implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand, that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity, and peace. Amen."
"Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter... the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."
The memorial on Western is not just for the three who died in Mississippi. It is dedicated in "appreciation for the idealism of young people everwhere whose sacrifices have created a more just world." I was taking pictures of trees and leaves the day before the election and I took a few of the memorial. I wasn't prepared for the text, and reading it again hit me like a thunderbolt. I couldn't reconcile it with what was happening around me.
A closing benediction from a small, old, pastor whose face is obscured by the microphones in front of him. I won't know his name until I Google it later. It's Joseph Lowery: United Methodist minister, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and civil rights activist for over fifty years. He speaks against the rhythm; I wonder how many people know he is quoting a hymn, the unofficial Black National Anthem.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.
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