letting out a sigh for these centuries

“We ain’t what we ought to be, and we ain’t what we want to be and we ain’t what we’re going to be. But thank God, we ain’t what we was.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr., quoting a former slave, as quoted in Kristof's piece last night

This election was not about race for me, but today, this is what I'm relishing and crying and gushing about. I'm not blind, I know he isn't perfect, and I know the ship of our country might have only turned a degree or two last night. But it's an incredible moment that I have to mark here, almost 400 years after a Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of Africans for food on our shore in 1619, and I can't help but weep, along with ". . . the souls of black folk, living and dead, [who] wept – and laughed, screamed and danced – releasing 400 years of pent up emotion."

From his victory speech last night:

That’s the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we’ve already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA: When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA: She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA: A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

You can read his whole speech here.