A Letter To My Brother KTMDog

Ma 'Ella's Eyes

Taken/revised from the November 3, 2008 post at (barackobama.com) Douglas T. Cooper MD's Blog:

My Brother, we stand on the threshold of a new era, the dawning of a new day in America. And as we inexorably approach the penultimate eve before that dawning, I find myself thinking about your little girls. I envy your little girls, I envy them all the marvelous and amazing things they will be witness to in their lifetimes. Imagine my grandmother "Ma 'Ella", having seen all that she was blessed to see in her lifetime - what would she be saying now? Having lived to see the end of Jim Crow segregation, having the right to vote defended and being able to finally exercise it, seeing her eldest grandchild become a graduate of an Ivy League university, and then on to become a doctor. To have seen mankind move from trains, to planes, to rocket ships to the moon, and beyond. All in the space of her spare 77 year life span - just two years beyond that of her eldest daughter, my mother, who will reach her 75th year on the 30th of this month.

It literally sends shivers racing up and down my spine (and only Betty Davis singing "He Was a Big Freak", or "Pops" dropping that first solo on "West End Blues" can accomplish that feat with regularity nowadays) to think about what her response would have been had she lived long enough to see a "colored" man have a legitimate chance to attain the highest seat of political power in this land, a land which had so often demanded that she bow down whenever she endeavored to rise above her circumstance. I hope that when the day is done, our brother will have achieved his goal and thereby inspire so many more of us, who still abide, to rise above our circumstance. I hope and pray that the Good Lord blesses you and your girls with all of His loving grace and with a future as exciting and filled with earthshaking changes as the one He gifted Ma 'Ella with...