Rewarding centuries of discipline
CHICAGO
FOUR CENTURIES of discipline culminated in Barack Obama's stride to the Grant Park podium Tuesday as president-elect. He smiled, but the slow swan's grace of his waving made it clear he would not mimic the explosive jubilation from the sea of humanity before him. It was more than the weariness of the campaign and the laden years ahead. What connects all the pioneering African-American figures in US history is an unstinting discipline. Obama, in winning the presidency, did that tradition proud.
He had to be serious without being angry. He had to relate without being a clown. He had to be the soul brother for the nation without being a singer or preacher. He had to be cool without being cold, and, above all, he could never lose his cool.
Obama walked with the slaves who toiled for two-and-a-half centuries in the cotton fields, who could never lose their cool enduring the lash, family separation, castration, and rape. He had the focus of Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman, who led over 300 black people into freedom in 19 trips. When she threatened to shoot a weary escapee who wanted to give up, Tubman is quoted as saying, "he jumped right up and went on as well as anybody." Tubman boasted, "I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger."
Ida B. Wells kept writing against lynching after her Memphis newspaper office was destroyed. Black soldiers fought for national unity or global security, even when segregation soiled them at home. My father, a Korean War veteran, left Mississippi for Milwaukee when he saw a black World War II veteran, who lost a leg fighting for his country, get kicked off a store porch into the dust. My father-in-law, who fought in the Buffalo Solders on the Italian front in World War II, said it was amazing how little racism he encountered in Italy compared with the United States.
Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron wore a mask of calm despite the abuses heaped upon them. Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall scoured the law to end desegregation. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, Jo Ann Robinson mimeographed 35,000 leaflets overnight for the Montgomery bus boycott. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois stressed industry and intellect. As Fannie Lou Hamer risked beatings fighting for voting rights, saying she was sick and tired of being sick and tired, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X beautifully walked the tightrope of holding the nation accountable for racism while pushing personal responsibility.
And then there were the millions of ordinary black parents who told their children that no matter the barriers, no matter how lonely it could feel in America, there were no excuses for not trying to achieve.
All of this was in Obama as he stood at the podium in Grant Park, beginning his lonely road as president. He was the Tubman who never let his train off the track. He walked Martin's and Malcolm's tightrope into the hearts of millions of Americans, creating a sense of shared responsibility in this country for the first time in many years. This man who was raised by a single parent and grandmother made no excuses. A critical mass of Americans responded by saying: Yes, he can.
America once exploited the discipline of black people to create the nation's wealth. Now it has picked the most disciplined black man of our time to protect it. The next four or eight years offer a critical opportunity to complete this circle of history. Underachieving black children are going to see a black man as president of all the people, the most powerful man on earth. In a way that was never possible before, they know there are no excuses.
It is time to heed the order from Harriet Tubman to jump up and go on as anybody. Suddenly, amid great turmoil, a sliding nation appears poised to bury the ghosts of its past by seeing in Obama the discipline we all need now.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. 