This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, June 9, 2008 - St. Louis County Executive Charlie A. Dooley had to dig nearly four decades deep into his memory to find a historical moment that matched the sensations he felt about Barack Obama's meteoric rise from first-term U.S. senator to presumptive presidential nominee. Dooley found that moment in the TV announcement of Neil Armstrong exiting his spacecraft and walking on the moon in July 1969.
These are events that happen once in a blue moon, so to speak, and Dooley, the first black to be elected to the highest political office in St. Louis County, says feats like Obama's and Armstrong's capture the imagination of Americans and point its citizens to new possibilities.
"These were fantastic events," Dooley said. "I never thought I'd live to see a black man come this close to becoming president. We talk about Martin Luther King's dream and how far we've come. But this event shows that the country as a whole has come a long way, a very long way."
Obama's success has sparked a variety of emotions among St. Louisans involved in civil rights. While one person interviewed expressed disillusionment, others said they were left giddy or speechless, pleasantly shocked or overwhelmingly proud. The Obama phenomenon is now so big -- after being once so improbable -- that some of those interviewed took a few minutes to compose their thoughts, as if they were absorbing once more the impact of this historical moment.
"This event shows what democracy is all about," Dooley added. "It's this great feeling that anyone can be president of the United States. It's not a dream anymore. It can happen."
Then he paused once more and spoke the words as if to himself: "President of the United States.... It's beyond anyone's expectations, but it can happen. Just like seeing a man walk on the moon, nobody my age ever felt we'd be alive to see this."
St. Louis' first black mayor, Freeman Bosley Jr. said, "His achievement really confirms the fact that if you work hard and apply yourself, you can accomplish anything. Obama saw an opportunity that some didn't believe possible. But he had his eyes on the prize, and he won it."
Remembering his own moment in St. Louis history, Bosley says that the television images cannot pick up "how physically drained and extremely overjoyed Obama must feel after crossing this finish line."
Bosley says some people still might not have a clue of what Obama has done and that his achievement is as much about civil rights history as it is about politics.
"I'm sure some older people probably cried when the heard that Obama had won enough delegates to get the nomination," Bosley said. "That's because they're looking at this event in the context of history. I was never told where I could sit on a bus and couldn't sit in a train station. But some people were told because they remember how things were during segregation, and this (Obama) moment has a special meaning to them."
Bosley added that Obama has taken diversity to another level. Former Mayor Clarence Harmon agrees.
"Politics will never be the same because of Obama," Harmon says. "In St. Louis and elsewhere, politicians get in the habit of appealing to people's fears. That's the way political campaigns are run on the North Side and South Side."
Harmon says Obama has shown people a way to win by uniting rather than dividing people, by appealing to their common interests.
Norman Seay, a civil rights leader who participated in the Jefferson Bank demonstration, a key moment in local civil rights history, agrees with Bosley that Obama's success resonates on a number of levels, not just as a political event.
"It's very important for an African-American to become president," Seay says. "He's black, and he has a good message. His election would show the world that we are a democracy, and his success sends a message to young people that, 'Now I can be anything I want to be.' "
Robert Tabscott, a scholar of black history locally and nationally and the head of the Lovejoy Society, sounds a note of caution and sadness as he spoke about Obama in a race against John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee.
"I hope he can understand the necessity about speaking the truth about this country," Tabscott says of Obama. "This country is as divided over race as it has ever been. He lost West Virginia, where I'm from, because the people there don't like black people. He won't carry West Virginia because it's too ingrained in my people not to accept a black person as president."
Tabscott adds, "I don't think that civil rights has made the important impact in America that we'd like to think. If Obama were a dark-skinned African-American, he wouldn't be on the ticket. I want him to win, but I've never been more disillusioned as I am today.
"I think we've given the election to McCain."