From Bloody Sunday to our first black president

One of the unique privileges to living and working in Alabama at a time like this, is there are a LOT of civil rights leaders who were participants in the most historic events in the movement to get equal voting rights (Selma, Montgomery); now, they have a black president. Following is a glimpse of what it took to get from there to where we are today.

A journey of 2 civil rights leaders:

While it evoked dancing in America’s streets and a new national holiday in Kenya, President-elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech Tuesday night was met with a quieter joy by two civil rights leaders in Talladega County. Forty years ago they actively fought for the right of black people to vote, and they remember Bloody Sunday as a dark blot in the pages of America’s history book.

“I’ve been like everybody else: trying to savor the moment, trying to understand it, trying to define it; trying to explain it even to myself,” said an overwhelmed Horace L. Patterson Sr. of Talladega.

“It is a dream come true,” said Charles Woods of Childersburg. “I think it is a great day for America. We have truly shown that we are a country; that we’re united, and we have truly lived the dream of the Constitution.”

Patterson and Woods not only journeyed the road that led to the election of the first black man to the highest office in America; they helped to pave it, with their decades of involvement in civil rights activism. It was the same kind of hard work that President-elect Obama called upon Tuesday night for the purpose of remaking the nation, but this time as equals: “block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.” (more here)