TIME/2008 Presidential Race

By Steven Gray

Much of black America is still struggling to grasp the full meaning of Barack Obama's election to the presidency. The overall mood is awash with pride but shaded with angst and the larger question: Now what?

On Wednesday, the Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. appeared on Oprah Winfrey's celebratory post-election special. After learning the news, Gates says, "we jumped up, we wept, we hooped and hollered." It is hard to overestimate the historical significance of the election of the first black U.S. President. For many blacks, and certainly for much of the country and world, Obama's victory is an extraordinary step toward the redemption of America's original 400-year-old sin. It is astonishing not least for its quickness, coming just 145 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation effectively ending slavery and four decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. And it is even more astonishing for its decisiveness — Obama carried Virginia, once the home of the Confederacy, a place whose laws just five decades ago would have made the interracial union of his parents illegal.

"Just a little more than 10 years ago," Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin told TIME this week, "it was inconceivable to any of us that we would see an African American win a national party's ticket and then compete effectively. It's mind-boggling," she continued, "how much this means about the opportunities available to all people — Asians, Latinos and other people who've historically been locked out of the system."

What is perhaps most surprising about many blacks' support of Obama is that it was not immediate or easy. Many African Americans were initially skeptical about Obama's candidacy, partly because they regarded him as somehow inauthentically black due to his upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia, as well as his last name, which even the President-elect has described as "funny sounding."

Black support of Obama soared after he won last winter's Iowa caucuses. But there were moments in this campaign when Obama was forced to manage the issue of race deftly and explain the unexplainable to a largely white electorate. Consider the case of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Obama joined Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in the 1980s, when Obama was an obscure community organizer. Trinity gave Obama an entrée to the city's thriving black middle class, and Obama came to view Wright in particular as a mentor. Yet earlier this year, Obama was compelled for political reasons to leave the church. The public criticism stemmed from controversial comments about the U.S. by Wright that proved too harsh to the ears of outsiders, many who are not aware of the nuances of the black religious-cultural experience, or of the fact that black churches have traditionally been a place for coping with the legacy of racism in this country. When Obama left Trinity, he suggested that the scrutiny he faced because of Wright's sermons would follow him to whatever church he and his family chose to attend as the First Family. That will be especially true if the Obamas choose another traditional black church, where the rhetoric on matters of social policy and everyday life — not just on racism — may sound radical to much of the country.

Obama's candidacy inspired scores of blacks like Michael Johnson, 33, to vote for the first time. At about noon on Nov. 4, Johnson showed up at his Gary, Ind., polling station to cast his vote. But he was turned away. The reason: his name appeared on a list of people who had already cast absentee votes. Johnson left the station dismayed. He spent the next five hours driving across Lake County, Ind., sorting out the mess with election authorities in Crown Point, the county's seat, before eventually returning to the Gary polling station. He says the polling station's managers applauded when they saw him. "They didn't think I was coming back," the hotel dishwasher said late Tuesday. "But this election was just too important for me to miss."

Meanwhile, Barbara Gray, 65, a retiree who is also from Gary, said she voted for Obama partly because she hoped he would take interest in improving conditions in urban areas — like Obama's adopted hometown neighborhood, Hyde Park, a leafy Chicago enclave surrounded by some of the city's bleakest communities. She said Obama may be the first President with a firsthand understanding of life in neighborhoods like hers. Gray said she wants the basics: cracked sidewalks repaved, enough funding so that largely black and Latino urban public schools can compete with the predominately white schools in affluent suburbs. "Just look around," she said on Election Day, pointing to a long row of blighted buildings along one of Gary's main boulevards, Broadway Street. "There's 101 things that need to be done."

In an interview with TIME this week, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said that Obama's election "shows that there's nothing else we can't be. There's no university we can't be seriously considered to lead. There's no bank we can't be considered in if we have the right credentials."

There's no doubting that Obama's candidacy represents the shattering of many of the racial barriers that have long been entrenched in America. But it is also worth tempering those expectations. Standing in the crisp breeze along Chicago's Michigan Avenue, on the night of Obama's election, Freddie Arnett, a 51-year-old maintenance supervisor, expressed hope that Obama would show concern for urban affairs. But Arnett acknowledged, "I know it's going to take time."

Shortly after Obama's election, a throng of people stood outside the Chicago headquarters of two of the country's leading chronicles of black life, Jet and Ebony magazines, and beamed at a row of covers featuring Barack and Michelle Obama.

"Our country is showing its forward evolution, that the color of one's skin cannot inhibit one's ability, and that's worthy of celebration," said Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J.