King’s dream finally comes true as America embraces Barack Obama

LAST Tuesday I just happened to put on a recording of Joan Baez singing “We Shall Overcome,” and suddenly I thought of the poignancy of the day.

It is almost a half-a-century since it became the anthem of the civil rights movement in the United States and later of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam conflict.

John McCain was one of the Republican Party’s heroes of that conflict, but the people have rejected the Republican’s right-wing vision of America.

Back in 1968 when Eugene McCarthy opposed President Lyndon Johnson for re-election, he talked about turning the Statue of Liberty around, because she had her back to America.

The inscription on the concrete base of the statue, which was a gift from France to the United States, ends with: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Many black people, though not Obama himself, trace their ancestry to people kidnapped in Africa and brought to the United States as slaves.

Slavery was not finally abolished until 1865, almost 20 years after the Great Famine here, yet the United States is essentially the first modern democracy.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, actually owned slaves, but his relationship with them was much more complicated than most people realised. He fell in love with one of his slaves — 14-year-old Sally Hemmings.

At the time he was a widower and he inherited Sally from his late wife. The true story is one where fact seems stranger than fiction. It has all the ingredients of a ridiculously sordid soap opera.

Sally, who was younger than Jefferson’s eldest daughter, was actually a half-sister of Jefferson’s late wife. Both of them shared the same father, but Sally had the misfortunate of being born to a slave woman, and was therefore a slave herself.

She accompanied Jefferson in Paris in the 1780s during the American War of Independence. There was no slavery in France, so she was free to leave him, but there was obviously a strong attachment. He showered gifts on her and promised than any children they might have would be freed.

As a 17-year-old, she actually bore him a son, and he did free him and the other children that followed. Jefferson also freed Sally in his will.

It was ironic that the author of the Declaration of Independence should have kept slaves, and the idea that some of his own flesh and blood were retained as slaves even for a time certainly seemed rather contradictory, to say the least.

He could have freed her at any time, but she could not have lived with him in such circumstances without raising hackles in the United States, where the idea of inter-racial cohabitation was frowned upon. Thus, to live with him, she had to be his slave in order not to offend “civilised society”.

In effect, Sally Hemmings had to remain a slave in order to be free. Of course, as a woman she would have been a second-class citizen anyway. It was not until 1920 that women were accorded the constitutional the right to vote in the United States.

Electing a woman president will probably be the next political milestone, but that is not likely to be as momentous as what happened this week, because it is already suspected that many of the First Ladies really ran things behind the scenes.

Obama has become the personification of the melting pot into which those who migrated to American have assimilated. It was noteworthy that the British people were celebrating a person of their own with black blood, the new world motor racing champion, Lewis Hamilton. Tiger Woods, who is probably the world’s most famous sportsman, also has African heritage.

Obama is the first American to be elected president who has openly proclaimed black ancestry, but historians have contended that five different American Presidents had black ancestors, including Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Warren G Harding did not bother to deny the rumours. “How should I know whether or not one of my ancestors might have jumped the fence?” he said.

Obama’s victory speech in Grant Park, Chicago, was a piece of magnificent oratory that brought tears to many people’s eyes. Jesse Jackson was shown with tears streaming down his cheeks.

Ironically, during the campaign he was caught in an off-guarded moment by open microphone while Obama was saying that some black people needed to assume responsibility for their behaviour.

Jackson was recorded as he complained that Obama was “talking down to ni**ers.” He then added, “I’d like to cut his nuts off.” There was obviously little love lost between them, but even Jackson was moved to tears by the symbolism of that moment in Grant Park. Martin Luther King’s dream has finally come true.

“I have a dream,” King famously said, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

America has finally put slavery — and, in a sense, the American Civil War — behind it.

On November 5, 1943 an American military aircraft landed at what is now Shannon Airport with 16 men on board.

They were flying from Morocco to Britain when the got lost. Little over an hour later another similar aircraft landed, after getting lost on the same route. The two crews were put up overnight, but did not wish to associate with one another. The others were “damned Yankees,” one of the men complained.

There were still had remnants of the civil war in America, as you have remnants of our own civil war here. Even though neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael was yet founded during our civil war, you still have families voting one way or the other because of the way their ancestors shot in the civil war.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt died, his successor Harry Truman proffered his condolences to Roosevelt’s widow, but she immediately responded that it was Truman who needed her sympathy, because she knew that he could never live up to the expectations of the American people.

The Second World War was coming to an end and the American people were going to expect too much.

Truman is now considered one of the great presidents, but he was denounced during his White House years. His standing in the public opinion polls was actually lower than even Richard Nixon’s when he was forced to resign in 1974.

The only President to go any lower was George W. Bush in recent weeks, and this drove the final nails into John McCain’s political ambitions.

The overwhelming majority, some 96% of black people supported Obama. Many are likely to expect too much from him, and they are likely to become disillusioned.

Can he meet their expectations for “change” and deliver the promised tax cut to 95% of Americans?