Obama win stirs emotions, recasts race and politics

WASHINGTON — As Barack Obama rode a wave of youthful populism to become the first black president of the United States, Loretta Corinth finally told her grandson what so many other grandmothers have told their toddlers.

"I told him he could be president," said the 62-year-old black voter as drizzle dripped from her face outside a northern Virginia polling place. "Throughout this whole thing, I never let myself get too hopeful. But today, I finally let myself feel the joy, the hope of this. My grandson can be president.

"We're finally entering a new day. We're finally leaving the painful past behind."

There was no way to overstate the flood of emotion from Obama supporters Tuesday, regardless of their ethnicity. Hundreds of years of history changed in a single day.

Some voters were visibly shaken.

"He's transcendent," said Josh Rolan, 23, a white Obama supporter from Arlington, Va. "Do the math. He cuts across all boundaries. He didn't win this election by any one (racial) vote."

The 47-year-old Illinois senator's win stirred memories of those who experienced the civil rights movement firsthand.

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn remembers when he and other black students were banned in the 1960s from holding civil rights meetings at South Carolina State College. So they went to neighboring Claflin University, a Methodist school, where they planned demonstrations, marches and sit-ins to integrate the South.

"To have an African American get this far, it means that much of what we did back in the 1960s was worth it," said Clyburn, 68, the highest ranking black member of Congress. "There were questions about whether it made any sense. It did."

Before Obama won the White House after a grueling two-year campaign, only one black — the Rev. Jesse Jackson — had ever strode the stage as a serious candidate for president. He ran prominently for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 but never came close to winning.

It wasn't until 1989 that Virginia's Douglas Wilder became the first black elected as a governor.

In 1992, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

In 2001, Colin Powell became the first black appointed secretary of state, one of the key positions in any administration.