Best Damn Cry EVER!!!

When I was 5, I would watch Phil Donahue with my grandmother. At some point I decided that I wanted to be a talk show host, so whenever I was asked what I wanted to be I'd say "I'm going to be the first black female talk show host!" I remember the adults doing the, "Awww ain't that cute? Poor thang doesn't know any better", smile every time I made that pronouncement. Don't get me wrong nobody outright discouraged me or shared their disbelief in my ability to make it, in fact they offered words of encouragement said I could be whatever I wanted to be but I always remembered the smile. I remember the "I told you so smile" that I gave after watching Oprah's debut show. I guess on Tuesday, there was an African-American boy who smiled an "I told you so smile", while watching Barack Obama's Speech. I wonder if his parents cried as I had? Yeah I cried!!!! In that moment I remembered the stories my mother told of the Ku Klux Klan riding down her street with the headlights off while the inside car lights were on so their outfits could show. I remembered hearing about the times my uncle wasn't home when they drove past, (he had been out fishing), and how he had to hide up under the house until they had gone. I remembered the story of how my mother didn't receive her last paycheck and had never received any of the tips she'd earned working all summer at Irene's Diner because the owner was upset that she chose to go back to high school after the summer ended rather than dropping-out of school to continue working there as the owner had suggested. I remembered going to work with my mother, (on take your daughter to work day), and seeing her bosses face turn beet red after he'd asked me when I was going to work for his family-owned business and at 12 I told him "when I owned it!" I cried because I knew at that point no African-American child would ever go through their history book only to feel that their only contribution to American history was that of a slave and Martin Luther King. Most importantly I cried because I knew that no child would ever again see a smile that hid the knowledge that certain goals were unattainable because of the color of their skin. So Yes Tuesday I cried but it was the BEST DAMN CRY EVER!!!!!

~d-the-VIP