Laurence Witherington left Manchester to study in the Big Apple last year but loved it so much he stayed. Now a journalist at Smart Money, the Wall Street Journal’s magazine, he was able to witness Tuesday’s historic election night in Harlem. In this guest blog he trys to capture the drama of the night no American will ever forget. This is the first of many dipatched from across the pond as Laurence will soon have his own blog here and be keeping us in touch with goings-on in New York through Mancunian eyes.
“The drums, if one listened hard enough, had fallen silent. Barack Obama appeared on the big screen, poised, as ever, and ready to deliver the speech that this crowd in Harlem had thought could never come. It was appropriate
that Obama had been scaled up, his massive, campaign scarred visage yielding reluctantly to that smile.
“This is great,” a man tried to explain to his young son as he bounced with
excitement, Obama badges proudly jiggling on his lapel. “This is even larger
than Obama himself.”
When the words were over, the noise levels rose again and this time did not subside. The throng gathered more closely round the drummers whose beat mimicked the feverish euphoria now within the breast of every man, woman and child, and those that chose to leave pounded the same rhythm on the horns of
heir sturdy Lincolns and Crown Victorias, a noisy neighborhood finding the ultimate justification to make more noise.
But the crescendo had been sudden. Obama was crowned President-Elect by the networks at 11pm, yet at 9 the streets just a few blocks away from the rally, if not exactly quiet, were certainly business as usual. The same crew of boys loitered near a basketball court with, this night as others, nowhere better to go. Others peered over the shoulders of those in front, through the window of a makeshift DVD shop, the small television showing not the
votes coming in but the latest scenes from an urban rap video. There was no shouting, nobody appeared to be in a rush, there were no more people out on the streets, and no less.
Only when closer to seething 125th, the clogged artery that runs through Harlem, a street at once suffocating and full of life, were the first mentions of the election heard, the name “Obama” easily carrying itself from passing lips as the sandwiching words were lost. This apparent apathy is simply explained: it takes a lot to knock New York City out of its stride, and, even as the early States began to report, a Democratic victory was not certain.
Indeed, before Ohio swung resolutely towards Obama, the cheers and chants, the choreographed dance, had been largely contrived to please the media pack, desperate to record the moment that a black man became president in this definitively black neighbourhood. The more nuanced ear, however, picked up snippets of genuine significance.
“Have they called Florida yet?”
“Yeah, we got Florida.”
“Oh my god, we won!”
The exchange, spontaneous, between two strangers, a white man and a black man who last night became “we”, united in their premature hoorays.
Of course, by the time Florida had actually been won, the chants were “Yes we did”, even as the leader of the event stubbornly persisted with “can” and, though North Carolina would eventually be sucked up by the Democrat, one lady assured the crowd, “We don’t need notin’. We don’t need no North Carolina.”
The horde was now really enjoying their victory. Just as fans of a strutting football team might “Ole!” every completed pass, every state was now roared in, the political analysis of CNN or MSNBC or any other channel other than Fox News patiently listened to, and then cheered as it inevitably pointed to
an Obama triumph. The drum beat, so steady earlier in the night, was now definitely a bit faster.
David Patterson, the blind, black Governor of New York appeared on stage to speak as the sounds of Stevie Wonder died down. Obama was by now “signed, sealed and delivered,” as he had been so many times during the primaries, and Patterson saw fit to invoke the civil rights leaders whose names now appear
above the streets in Harlem: Adam Clayton Powell (Boulevard), Frederick Douglas (Boulevard), Malcolm X (Boulevard) and Martin Luther King (Boulevard).
“All of these leaders, on whose shoulders we stand, sleep well tonight,”roared Patterson, whose rhetoric is closer to that of those men than Obama’s, so cool as it avoids the stereotype of the angry black man.
Patterson, preaching on the emancipation of not just African Americans, promised that America would also soon put a woman and someone of Hispanic origins in the White House. The crowd went wild. This was not a gathering of the vitriolic masses, revenge nowhere on the agenda. McCain was only briefly booed and cries of “let him speak” went up before the sound system went down anyway. The intelligent people that New York City fosters realised that this was no moment for triumpalism; it had been too long and hard in the coming.
“Yes yes oh my god yes!” Obama appeared on screen, Michelle and his daughters with him. Now there were tears in the crowd, men that once hollered now sobbed. Silence for the speaker; lips move, crowd shuts up.
Total respect and awe.
Dim Sum Digital 