Voting for black man brings chills of delight

Considering that she was having a hard enough time believing it herself, Debra Downell, 51, of Rose Park, was rendered momentarily speechless when asked how her late father and late grandfather might have reacted to the opportunity to vote for an African-American for president of the United States.

Finally she said, "It would be inconceivable to them, really. Once it sunk in I'm sure they would be emotional about it. I know I am. I can hardly think about it without getting chills."

Debra was standing in the lobby of the Day-Riverside Library in Rose Park on Salt Lake's west side, just around the corner from the polling station where the historic ballot of 2008 featured the name of Barack Obama, the first black man to be a major party candidate for president.

Debra, a black woman whose great-grandmother was a slave, was not bashful in announcing that she voted for Obama. She was so eager to cast her ballot that she did it a week ago in early voting.

"I've always been told I should keep a journal and I never did," she said. "But after I voted I went home and started one. My first entry was 'Today I voted for a black man for president."'

"It took a lot of courage for him to step forward and run," she said of Obama. "Being black in America, it's not easy."

Just the other day, she said, her 11-year-old son came home and told her that some kids at school called him the N word — and it wasn't very long ago that two of her children had bleach thrown on them in Rose Park.

"It's sickening but it happens," she said. "My kids asked why anyone would do that. All I could say was they don't know how precious you are."

But things are looking up.

"Maybe with him (Obama) as the example, people will look differently at African-Americans and not have such a stereotypical view," she said. "Things are changing. Even though some things are still the same, they are changing."

Debra grew up in Virginia and New Mexico. Her mother was a full-blooded Pueblo Indian and married her father when he was stationed in the Air Force in New Mexico. She was a 6-year-old enrolled in an all-black school in northern Virginia when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 just as the Civil Rights movement was starting to gain steam (and 2-year-old Barack Obama, a contemporary who was also the product of a mixed marriage and would be identified by his black skin, was starting out life in Hawaii).

Debra was bused to school with white kids in 1968 when Robert Kennedy was assassinated shortly after he announced his candidacy for the presidency.