2008 Presidential Election Ending USA Apartheid

Obama Starts Healing America’s Divided House

Nov 8, 2008

When America elected Barack Obama, its first black president, emotion was rampant. Not because of political ideology but for the realization that the nation changed.

The election of America’s first non-white president is historical in many ways, including the knowledge that her experiment in democracy has finally come to fruition. Jesus of Nazareth said, in The Bible (Mathew 12:25), "Every…house divided against itself shall not stand." The first President from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, paraphrased those words during a time of great turmoil in an attempt to maintain cohesion. However black Americans, and like minded whites, saw little unity in America’s divided house for most of its history.

Slavery, first introduced in Virginia in 1607, was the unalterable stain on American democracy. 400 years later, a young black Senator used the slogan, “Change We Can Believe In” to instill hope in a divided populace. How ironic the former slave state and Capital of the Confederacy would undergo such change and vote for this man. The once red state of Virginia turned blue and set the tone for the rest of America.

A Divided Nation

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” was written on July 4th 1776 in the Declaration of Independence. William Freehling wrote in The Founding Fathers and Slavery, “…no man needed to defend the Founding Fathers on slavery. However, serious were their sins…the men who made the American Revolution were deemed to have placed black slavery at bay….The Declaration of Independence…was a white man’s document.”

Division was written into the heart of America’s Constitution. Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 counted slaves as “three-fifths of a whole person.” The fugitive slave acts of 1793 specifically separated slaves (and those who disagreed with slavery) by defining slaves as property possessing no rights or due process.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in “A Bill Declaring Who Shall Be Deemed Citizens of this [Virginia] Commonwealth, SECTION I. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that all white persons…of this commonwealth…shall be deemed citizens....”

Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1858, "I am not…in favor of bringing about…the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not…in favor of making voters…of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office….There is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

In his 1860 inaugural address he reaffirmed his belief, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery….” And on August 22, 1862, in a letter to Horace Greeley he wrote, "My paramount object…is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it….”

Jim Crow laws, developed during Reconstruction, saw racial segregation rise to new heights. President, Woodrow Wilson mandated segregation of Federal offices in 1913. By 1920 Southern Democrats’ Progressive Era legalized, separation of African Americans from the general population – separate and unequal.

After World War 2 Northern ideas clashed with Southern principles that culminated on the steps of the University of Alabama. Uttering the words in his inaugural speech, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever," Alabama Governor George Wallace would enforce the American apartheid system. Debbie Elliott of National Public Radio wrote on June 11th 2003, “The drama of the nation's division…came sharply into focus that June day [1963.]” Standing in the schoolhouse doorway Wallace reminded the world that the USA was infested with the concept of racial separation.

This divided nation, forced by economics and war, has passed through a point long thought impenetrable by people of color. The ringing words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., resonated in thoughts. “I have a dream that…one day…they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” It seems “one day” was November 4th 2008; a day that saw most Americans cry with joy over the election of a dynamic young Senator from Illinois that happened to be black.

The copyright of the article 2008 Presidential Election Ending USA Apartheid in US Elections is owned by Frank W. Hardy. Permission to republish 2008 Presidential Election Ending USA Apartheid in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.