Southern view: Celebration and apprehension

Preacher-barbecue owner still undecided
While Obama’s support appears broad among Nashville’s African-Americans, Dennis Smart, the 42-year-old  owner of  a roadside barbeque concession in the suburb of Lakewood and a preacher at an all-white church, said he is struggling with the moment.  He said he listens to customers of all races talking politics each day as they await their wings or ribs and has not yet decided who will get his vote on Election Day. He is comparing the candidates on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, and praying for guidance.

“Some people say to me ‘You have to vote for Obama. This is history. Don’t you want to be a part of history?’”

“But Dr. Martin Luther King taught us to judge a person on the content of their character, not on the color of their skin,” said Smart. “If we vote for him because he’s black, isn’t that going backward?”

And some in the black community suggests that Obama’s success is not a signal that the racial divide in America is vanishing, but an indicator that the public has shifted priorities in light of the current economic crisis.

“I think the great divide in our country is now economic, not racial … and I think that divide has grown in the last eight years,” said Philippa Thompson, a 48-year old teacher who attends law school part-time.

“When I voted, I thought ‘this is a historical precedent,’” she said. “But… I want someone who is going to lead us out of this mess that we’re in. … There were several who could have done it. He’s the one that rose above the fray.”

‘America trying to be America’
For some community elders, though, it’s hard to be so matter-of-fact about this moment. When local civil rights leader Rev. James “Tex” Thomas went to vote last week. he regaled young black voters with his memories of paying a polling tax the first time he voted.  As a young man at the American Baptist College, he was a leading figure in the protest movement that finally ended segregation in Nashville’s eateries. He never expected to see an African American within reach of the White House.

“I never even expected to be able to eat at a Picadilly,” said Thomas, 72, referring to a popular buffet chain.

Thomas cast Obama as the latest in a line of black leaders who have, as he put it, kicked open a door for later generations — from civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks and Jesse Jackson to Secretary of State Colin Powell. But he also credits white Americans for getting past race as a defining issue.

“My time is almost up, but at least I’m able to see something happen,” he said, projecting a win for Obama nationally, though not in Tennessee. “But it’s not just Obama being president, but America trying to be America.”

But for some African-Americans, especially those who lived through the violence of the 1960s, the fear is nearly as great as the excitement. It was just down the road, in Memphis, where another charismatic black leader, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

‘He's going to have to watch his back’
“The main peril is he’s going to have to watch his back,” said James Bradford, 74, while watching a political rally on television from his living room in Bordeaux. “If they get half a chance they will get rid of him.”

“I’m praying for him,” added Bradford’s wife, Ruth.

Baker, the medical worker, said similar thoughts also have occurred to her.

“Every time I see Barack Obama in one of his campaign stops … I think ‘wow, he’s out there in the open,’ so anything can happen,” she said. “That is a fear, it just is … and if he gets elected that fear is going to be heightened.”

But as it has in the past, she said, faith has to trump fear to make way for progress:

“You know, sometimes you have to pray and let it go, and that's the bottom line.”

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