Yurt
01-16-2009, 10:20 AM
Granddaughter of slave: I was 'afraid' for Obama
Mary Dowden smiles when she thinks about this moment in history. At 80 years old, she's the granddaughter of a slave who was born in a cotton field outside of Como, Mississippi.
It's difficult to put into words how she feels about Barack Obama, the issues so complex for a black country girl who lost both her parents by the age of 18 and then had to work a hard-scrabble life as a sharecropper.
"I was really afraid for him, because I didn't want nobody to kill him," she says when asked about casting her ballot for Obama.
But she pauses and smiles. "I'm awfully proud of him, as a black person."
Did she ever think she would see this moment?
"No, I didn't," she says. "I always thought that, you know, the white was over the black, that they was the leading folks, that one nation is gonna be over another one, and that would be the white over the black. I never thought it would be a black
"He's going to bring a sense of respect in Mississippi, that it's not just a white man's country. You can be young, you can be black, and you can do anything that you want to do," Turner says. "You do have a chance. And he's gonna put that all on the table for us."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/16/black.in.mississippi/index.html
one positive about obama is that hopefully with his election we can end or seriously curb the seemingly everlasting slavery/racist issue of black vs. white in this country. while i don't believe someone needed obama to make them feel like they could succeed in this country, i can somewhat understand their reasons for thinking so.
Mary Dowden smiles when she thinks about this moment in history. At 80 years old, she's the granddaughter of a slave who was born in a cotton field outside of Como, Mississippi.
It's difficult to put into words how she feels about Barack Obama, the issues so complex for a black country girl who lost both her parents by the age of 18 and then had to work a hard-scrabble life as a sharecropper.
"I was really afraid for him, because I didn't want nobody to kill him," she says when asked about casting her ballot for Obama.
But she pauses and smiles. "I'm awfully proud of him, as a black person."
Did she ever think she would see this moment?
"No, I didn't," she says. "I always thought that, you know, the white was over the black, that they was the leading folks, that one nation is gonna be over another one, and that would be the white over the black. I never thought it would be a black
"He's going to bring a sense of respect in Mississippi, that it's not just a white man's country. You can be young, you can be black, and you can do anything that you want to do," Turner says. "You do have a chance. And he's gonna put that all on the table for us."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/16/black.in.mississippi/index.html
one positive about obama is that hopefully with his election we can end or seriously curb the seemingly everlasting slavery/racist issue of black vs. white in this country. while i don't believe someone needed obama to make them feel like they could succeed in this country, i can somewhat understand their reasons for thinking so.