Black immigrants see triumphs in Obama

Success through education
The president-elect achieved success through education, so prized in the Caribbean country that families scrape together money for tuition even in the hardest times. He made his name in Chicago, a city whose first permanent settler was Haitian. He named a Haitian-American, Patrick Gaspard, as his political director. Finally Obama fulfills Haiti's legacy as home of the world's first successful slave rebellion, led by former slave Toussaint L'Ouverture.

"Martin Luther King's movement was a continuation of Toussaint L'Ouverture's dream. Obama is, 40 years later, the realization of Martin Luther King's dreams," said Denis. "Toussaint L'Ouverture didn't work in vain."

Denis, a naturalized citizen whose bookstore Libreri Mapou is a cornerstone of Miami's Little Haiti, also sees himself in Obama's father, who left a poor African village to study in the United States.

"Now his son is president," Denis said. "He's just like me. I came to this country with $50 in my pocket and now look at me, with two doctors in my family."

Able to connect with voters
For all the times that Obama had to fit into a new environment, he never lost his roots, said Sharon Makoriwa, a 30-year-old Kenyan.

Obama has said that while the world saw him as black, he still identified with the small-town values instilled in him by his Midwestern-grown grandparents, something that helped him connect with rural Illinois voters in his Senate run.

"During the campaign they said, 'Who exactly is this Obama?' I found it a very ridiculous question," said Makoriwa, a grantswriter for the African Services Committee in New York.

"I connected with him as a newcomer to the United States. I'm living in a new culture, I have to learn to respect the culture and I have to fall back on my values and my principles to be who I am," she said.

Many immigrants are also hopeful that Obama will inspire change in their home countries.

The president-elect's Kenyan ancestry gives him the authority to criticize African governments, and will set an example on a continent where leaders often fail to uphold the rule of law, said Bonaventure Ezekwenna, 47, who left Nigeria to study in New York in 1983.

"He is in a better position than anybody else to speak with the leadership on the African continent, eyeball to eyeball, that it is time for change," said Ezekwenna, CEO of Africans in America, which focuses on human trafficking issues. "As leader of the free world, if he tells them the game is up in his motherland, his ancestral home, they will get a clue that the game is up."

'History on my shoulder'
Marlon Hill, a Jamaican-born Miami attorney, made Obama's election official as a member of Florida's Electoral College.

"It felt like carrying tons of history on my shoulder," the 37-year-old said.

But Inauguration Day should not be a time for immigrants to stop and reflect on past sacrifices and achievements. They need to expect more, he said — from Obama and from themselves.

"It's beyond just being about Obama and him being a president who is black. It is about our circumstances and, whether we are black or black immigrants, can we do more with our circumstances? Can we provide for our families around us?" Hill said. "We have fewer excuses now because of an election of an Obama-like person."

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