Here we are in the last few days of this interminable election campaign.

I’ve wanted to write about Barack Obama for a long time now. I’ve hesitated. What could I say? So much had been said already. Perhaps too much-people may have tired of hearing of him already.

But I’ve been profoundly moved, to tears at times, by him, by his run for the Presidency.
I grew up in a time when no one would believe that a black man could be President of the United States. In fact, I grew up in a time where black men fought, spent time in jail, and even gave their lives to be able to vote for a President of the United States.

As a child, I watched grainy black and white television images of James Meredith turned away from the University of Mississippi, of Ruby Bridges in New Orleans, and students in Little Rock, Arkansas being spit on and called “niggers” as they marched up the steps of their new school. I remember seeing horrific pictures of Emmett Till’s burned and mutilated body recovered from a river in Mississippi.

As a teenager I witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and of Malcolm X.

I witnessed the murder of Bobby Kennedy, a privileged son of the Northeast, who visited poor black sharecropping families in Mississippi and was so visibly moved by what he saw.

And I am profoundly moved by the Presidential candidacy of Barack Obama.

I knew how awful all those occurrences were then, but I’ve lived 40+ more years to realize the compounded pain of them.

I grew up in the rarefied position of being a “person of color”, from the American South even, but not looking enough like a “black person” to be identified as such, unless I was, of course, with some of my cousins or friends who could be more easily identified. Then I, too, heard that word hurled at me.

Like Barack, my family and I do not overtly share the legacy of slavery, as I descended from “people of color” who were free. Yet, I believe we all, black, white and “free colored” are burdened by the legacy of slavery in this country.

I remember watching the images of a young Cassius Clay bursting on the scene of the national consciousness, boasting about how beautiful he was, saying he was black and proud. And I remember being embarrassed by him, and rooting for the “old Negro” in the bout with Sonny Liston. I felt so sorry for Liston, the lumbering bear of a man, the “good Negro” being trounced by this upstart.

I remember traveling to Vancouver, Canada with my mutli-hued family at 9 or 10 years old, and wondering aloud to my mother why everyone was looking at us.

“It’s all right” she said with a slight chuckle. “We just look different than everybody else here.”

Since then I’ve lived in New York City where I blended in perfectly. And since then  people who look “different” have shown up everywhere- in Los Angeles, in State College, Pennsylvania, where  Fran, my white friend with Appalachian roots, and  Osseo, her West African husband, raised their 3 children, and even in the heartland of Kansas, where Barack Obama spent his early years. And since then, I’ve come to understand what Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali meant when he spoke of how beautiful he was.

I’ve been intrigued by Obama from the beginning. I strongly support him, not because he’s the best black man for the job, but because I believe he’s the best man for the job ahead of us now.  A thoughtful man, a man of great intelligence, possessing a cool demeanor, measured in his speech, inspirational, a healer. A man who looks like the rest of the world to face a global future, a man who has lived in other places in the world to lead America out of its parochialism.  A man who early on was recognized as being extraordinary enough to become the first black head of the Harvard Law Review. A constitutional scholar in a time when the Constitution has been shredded by the past administration. I see so clearly that he is the face of the future when he stands beside John McCain, the face of the past.

I’ve seen the cautious, yet growing enthusiasm in the black community, a pride that has grown to a full simmer, ready to boil with excitement at the prospect of a President Obama.

I believe the times we find our ourselves in will give him the opportunity to be not only a good President, but a great one, as FDR found himself given the opportunity to be a great President.

On a more personal note, apart from the economy, the wars, and whatever else lies before us, I have said, many times in this past year I believe that we, the American people have been given an opportunity, if we open ourselves to it, to heal our greatest national wound- the legacy of slavery, of Jim Crow, of the brutal civil rights fight, and the tinge of “race”-ism that permeates every corner of our society.

And I am profoundly moved by the candidacy of Barack Obama.