Cross-posted by Will Bunch at my Philadelphia Daily News blog, Attytood. Like most newspaper blogs, sadly, a lot of right-wingers camp out there, so I urge you come to come over and join the battle.
"I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs, and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered."
-- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
It was only yesterday that Dr. King delivered that speech, and it was was only yesterday -- 1955, just 53 years ago, and just six short years before Barack Obama was born, that a black woman named Rosa Parks was ordered to get out of her seat on a Montgomery bus only because of the color of her skin.
Yesterday finally ended today.
Now, over the next three months, we will get the debate that every American deserves over who is most qualified to become president. But tonight -- regardless of political persuasion -- we should all take one deep breath and pause to marvel at a nation waking up to history, as Barack Obama becomes the first African-American nominated as a major party candidate to be president.