The Audacity of Hope

Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention. The speech titled “The Audacity of Hope” was electrifying and gave Americans especially black Americans glimmers of hope. Those hope include the possibility that Obama a black man might one day win, the highest office in the land, The Presidency.

I watched and enjoyed Barack Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech. Up until the night of Obama’s speech the only speech or speaker I had enjoyed more was the late Barbara Jordan. Congresswoman Jordan was an excellent orator with a brilliant mind. She gave the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention.

Thursday night I visited my oldest daughter; she gave me the political junkie permission to turn the television to a cable news channel. As I read the words Obama wins the Iowa Democratic Caucus on the screen, I blinked my eyes and the scene changed to a political analyst. As one of the MSNBC analyst spoke the words Obama has won the Iowa Democratic Caucus I screamed and jumped up and down.

I could not believe my eyes or ears. Until that very moment I was one of those undecided Black voters. I wanted a Democrat any Democrat in the White House in 2009. I was silently “hoping” that Al Gore would enter the race so that the Democrats could win back the White House. I didn’t like our chances for victory with Hillary or Senator Obama.

Although I watched more than my share of democratic debates last year, I did not dare “hope” that Obama could win the Iowa Democratic Caucus. I could not wrap my mind around the fact that he could win in Iowa.

I remembered watching Oprah on the campaign trail with Obama in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. The enthusiasm of the large overwhelming white audience in Iowa was refreshing. Watching those two great Americans being judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin gave me my first glimmer of hope. Seeing Obama and Oprah with our people in South Carolina gave me even greater hope.

The word "hope" has a very special meaning for me. As a black woman I was born into poverty. Excerpts from Chapter One of my book “A Case of Racial Discrimination and Retaliation Real or Imagined.”

“My mother and grandmother worked on the same tobacco farms in Quincy, Florida. While employed on one of the tobacco farms, my mother spoke of Dr. Martin Luther King and what would later be known as the Civil Rights Movement. The next day my grandmother informed my mother that Mr. Carter, the owner of the farm, told her to tell my mother not to come back to work.

The firing of my mother was my earliest memory of racial unfairness. According to Mr. Carter, my mother was fired because she mentioned that nigger Dr. Martin Luther King’s name on his farm. When Granny told my mother the reason that she was fired my mother replied, “no one can tell me who I can and can’t talk about”. “God made white people and colored people and no one is better than anyone else.” “We are all equal.”

After being fired, my mother wasn’t able to find work in Quincy, Florida. She sought work and wasn’t able to get a job on any of the other local tobacco farms. At age 32 and the mother of seven children, she decided that she had to leave her birthplace, children, family, and home.

At the end of the school year my mother decided that we would go on the season. My mother’s family had once worked on the season. She believed that we could work and save money for a better life by going to different states in order to pick seasonal fruits and vegetables. During the summer of 1968 we went to South Carolina to pick peaches. When we arrived in South Carolina it was the beginning of the peach-harvesting season.

After the peach season ended we went to the village of Brockport, New York to work on another labor camp. Most of the people working on the camp were black men. Many of them were single or had left their families at home and came up for the season alone.

We were still living on the labor camp in Brockport during the start of the l968 to 1969 school term. Brockport had an educational complex and the elementary, junior high and high school were all located in that area.

We were picked up and dropped off at school on a road in front of the labor camp. On the school bus drive to school I saw houses that looked like mansions. They were huge two story structures with beautiful lawns. White children got on the bus in front of those homes. They looked like the people I had only seen on television. The white children appeared to be very rich and very happy.

For approximately two and a half months, I attended Brockport Junior High School. The school was 98 percent white. I was comfortable attending the school because of my recent experience at the white school Lake Wales Junior High.

I had to walk back to the labor camp after staying to play sports after school. It was during these walks back to the labor camp that I walked across the campus of State University of New York College at Brockport (SUNY at Brockport). The college was located in the same general area as the village schools.

After I returned to Lake Wales Junior High two major events occurred to me, in my 9th grade Civic class. One of the events would change my life forever. During one of the six-week marking periods my teacher discovered that I cheated on a test. I cheated by taking and passing the test for another student. I cheated for the other student, a colored male, because he wasn’t doing well in the class. I printed the answers on his test and wrote my answers in cursor. I scored 100 percent on the test with my name on it. I scored 80 percent on the other test for my friend.

My teacher confronted me and told me that he was going to give me a zero for the test. He continued by informing me that I would have to work very hard in order to pass the class for that particular marking period. I accepted my fate I deserved the C or D that I made in the class instead of my usual A. (I can’t remember if I made a C or D).

Later that year I was introduced to the U.S. Constitution in the same Civics class. I listened intensely as the teacher explained the constitutional protection of the13th and 14 Amendments of the United States Constitution. Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution - Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subjected to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The fact that the XIV Amendment contained the due process and equal protection clauses meant more to me than my teacher would ever know. The knowledge that all Americans are protected by “our” constitution changed my whole outlook on life.

My mother’s statements made years earlier that we are all equal because GOD made us all raced through my mind. I realized and accepted the fact that GOD really did make all people equal. The knowledge and acceptance of this fact coupled with my new found understanding of the meaning of the 13th and 14th amendment guarantees would order and guide me for the rest of my life to my divine destiny and purpose.

For the first time in my life I had “hope” As an American these two amendments insured me that my future would be brighter and different than that of my mother. I would achieve my mother’s dream for me to graduate from high school. I would also accomplish my new dream for myself to graduate from college. My new dream now consisted of graduating from college, having a husband, having children that shared the same last name, and living in a beautiful house.”

Thursday night Obama’s speech was presidential. It was no doubt one of the best political speeches of my generation. As a fifty-three year old black woman I hope that this man Obama time has come, that the time is now. I now have the audacity to hope, pray, and believe that Senator Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States of America.
Vera Richardson is the author of "A Case of Racial Discrimination and Retaliation Real or Imagined."

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