I was born a Negro on April 9, 1963, in Washington, D.C.

’s Freedmen’s Hospital----100 years after the

Emancipation Proclamation and the same day police arrested non violent protestors in Birmingham, Alabama,
who were part of the campaign that would lead to the writing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from
Birmingham Jail.” Four months later my paternal grandmother from Griffin, Georgia babysat me so my
parents---Payton Brailsford Cook, who had recently graduated from Howard University School of Divinity and
completed a clinical chaplaincy residency program, and Mary Murray Cook, a head nurse at DC General
Hospital from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, could attend the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Upon his return from the Korean War, my father was humiliated by a white bus driver who barked “Nigger, get
to the back of the bus!” and as a result, he swore to never return to the Jim Crow south. However, three months
after the march we were headed to Milledgeville, Georgia where I grew up. I never asked my father about his
change of mind, but I believe that Dr. King’s words at the march not only inspired him, but the spirit of the
interracial crowd on that hot August day on the national mall gave him hope that I would grow up in a world not
marred by the pain and limitations of American apartheid.
While I was never called out of my name like my father or had to suffer the indignity of inferior
segregated facilities, I did not escape the sting of white supremacy. By middle school, I seriously questioned the
applicability of the American creed to my life. My 7th grade social science project queried, “Should Black
Americans Participate in the Bicentennial?” and a high school poem ended “ALL WHITE MEN are created
equal/ and I ain’t white/ and I ain’t male so/ Don’t give me that bull.” By college I had decided that as a black
woman I would never be elected president and in 1988 when I was sworn into the Georgia Bar, I refused to
include the pledge of allegiance in my swearing in ceremony. When I told my father that I no longer felt like an
American because of the discrimination I had experienced, he wept. The hope in the fulfillment of the American
creed that he had instilled in me had turned to despair. Yet, my hope was reborn, resuscitated, and reinvigorated
with Obama’s Iowa Caucus victory on January 3, 2008; his Democratic nomination on June 3, 2008, and his
election on November 4, 2008.
Making the pilgrimage to Washington to personally witness Barack Obama’s inauguration was not just
for me. It was for my ancestors on whose shoulders I stand. It was for the millions of Africans who did not
survive the Middle Passage, it was for the enslaved Africans who built the White House, it was for the black
folks who gathered in the brush arbors to worship and pray for freedom; it was for Maria Stewart and Frederick
Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman and Henry McNeal Turner, Ida B. Wells and A.
Phillip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune and Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker. It was for all the
Big Mamas and Ma Dears and grandmothers who made a way out of no way. It was for all the Papas and
Juniors and uncles and brers who dreamed of a better day for their children. It was for my parents who had
stood on the same ground 45 ½ years ago.

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 The day had special meaning for me because I woke up that Tuesday morning praying and in the Black
Church tradition as I reflected on the journey of my ancestors to that moment in history, I began with the
familiar words of a hymn---“God of our weary years, God of our silent tears”. Consequently, when Rev. Joseph
Lowery, who inspired me to participate in my first civil rights march in college, began his benediction with
those words, I shouted and did a holy step. As he continued his prayer, I shouted more and did a Langston
Hughes’ “I too am America” dance. Then I joined the “mosaic of colors, faiths and creeds” gathered on that
cold winter morning to shout “Amen! Amen! Amen!” All the pain from the past is not removed but I could once
again feel proud to be an American because the citizens of this country elected Barack Obama president. As
President Obama stated in his inaugural address, many challenges still lie ahead and as the old folks used to say,
“We are not what we want to be, but thank God we are not what we used to be.”