As a teenager, I remember standing in front of the Alabama State Capitol Building, with a line of blue shirted state troopers guarding the doors, in a crowd of thousands, at the end of the Selma to Montgomery march.  I had taken a bus down from New York where I grew up and slept on the floor between the pews of a Black church in Montgomery.

Last week I walked along Back River Road in Dover, New Hampshire with a friend and our eight year old daughters, knocking on doors for Barack Obama.  Hard to believe the headlines today, and see a Black family as the first family.  It brought tears to my eyes, as I am sure it did to many. 

It is real. I know it took an amazing amount of hard work.  It took people believing, hoping, and being willing to work together for something they all knew would make a difference.  Now Barack Obama is President. Or come January 20, 2009, he will be.  Now our real work begins: to make the hope a reality.  As they say, freedom is a constant struggle.