A holiday and an inauguration day

I'm missing the Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast today. For most of the years that the holiday has been celebrated in Wilson, I have worked either as a reporter at the breakfast or back at the newspaper office, putting out the day's edition. A couple of times I attended the breakfast without any work responsibilities, just to be there and see all the folks who attended. The jam-packed Darden Alumni Center always was filled with good will and good conversation among a wide diversity of Wilson residents.

Today's MLK holiday holds special significance in that it comes a day before the inauguration of our nation's first African-American president, creating a two-day celebration of America's civil rights pioneers and this nation's conquest of the racial divide. Speakers at MLK celebrations across the country will remind listeners that racism has not ended and that racial minorities in this great nation still face huge hurdles, and they will be right. But this day cannot pass without acknowledging the significance of Barak Obama's election to the nation's highest office.

Obama has achieved what even King was reluctant to imagine — election of a black man to the most powerful office in America by an electorate dominated by white voters. Obama won many votes because he was black. Large numbers of voters, both black and white, were eager to vote for black president. But many more Americans voted for him because of his policies, his inspiring speeches, his management of his campaign, his personality, his leadership style and what King famously called "the content of his character" — without regard to race.

This is a huge achievement for Obama personally and for America as a nation, an achievement that cannot be taken lightly. Obama's inauguration Tuesday might not signify the beginning of post-racial politics, but it is undoubtedly an opening into that promised land. Much depends on the degree of Obama's success as president. He takes office amid the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s and at a time of serious international threats to U.S. security.

African-Americans across the country, both those who played roles in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and those too young to remember the 1960s, will celebrate today and tomorrow, and they have every right to do so. But as both George W. Bush and John McCain have pointed out, Obama's success is an inspiration, a validation and a point of pride for all Americans, echoing Obama's own famous words from 2004 that there is not a black America, a white America, a Latino America; there is only the United States of America.