The moment of the night: CNN was playing on the huge screens in the park. We watched as Wolf Blitzer called the states and the huge panel of pundits pronounced on whatever struck their fancy. Some time after Ohio was called, they turned the volume of the TVs down and shrunk the image of CNN to show pictures of the crowd that was present at Grant park. There was a whisper behind us that several networks had called the election for Obama. I was with a group of U of C political scientists and since all of our phones were down and we could not confirm via the blogs and election maps that we've all become addicted to, we doubted. The crowd murmured and shifted.

Then, an unassuming skinny young white guy in a black hoodie came out onto the stage and said into the microphone, "Mic check 1, 2, 3. Mic check 1, 2. Mic check for the President Elect of the United States of America."

The crowd exploded. 250,000 of us, jumping up and down, dancing, crying. Strangers hugged. Everyone suffused in the momentous emotion of the moment.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/mediaplay.php?id=14473&admin=32

I was running for the elevator at work, trying to get home before the snow storm. A beautiful, tall African American sister smiled at me and held the door. I quickly recognized her as Sen. Barack Obama's Michelle. I smiled back and thanked her. From then on, when she would see me and I her, we would both smile and wave. I had no idea that this would be the First Lady of the United States of America - my co-worker so to speak! My pride in the Obamas leaves me speechless. Congratulations to the Obamas!

I didn't have a ticket for the rally on Tuesday evening. Instead, I joined the throngs of celebrants gathered around one of the many the Jumbotrons strategically located south and east of the Art Institute.

The time it took to take the Metra commute from Oak Park, meet a friend at Union Station, and then catch a taxi to Grant Park meant we were unaware that Sen. Obama had already won the necessary number of electoral votes. Once the taxi dropped us off at Wabash, the rumors were flying among the masses heading east and people were already going nuts.

As we crept closer to a screen as big as my apartment living room, into sharp focus came Sen. John McCain about to deliver his concession speech. Listening to his respectful words, I glanced around only to see Saint Gaudens' statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln looming in the background. Some teenagers had scaled the 8-foot high pedestal to get a better view, eventually taking turns to sit in the great man's lap. The symbolism wasn't lost on anyone. Obama frequently referred to Lincoln's words through-out his campaign, and he did it again during Tuesday's speech.

The scene brought to mind Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" in which the author describes how Lincoln recruited members of the opposition to join his cabinet. Some analysts are now suggesting that Obama should do the same. We shall see. One possible signal of an alternative option might be the appointment of Rep. Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, a seasoned Democratic politician famous for his hardball tactics.

What do you think? Should President-elect Obama share power with Republicans? Or, given the success of Congressional Democrats on Tuesday night, should Obama stay within his party?

I had a ticket for Jesse Jackson Jr's election night party at the Hilton on South Michigan. About 7:30 p.m., I hopped on the #6 Jackson Express at 55th and South Hyde Park. The ride up to the 47th entrance to Lake Shore Drive was slow: At each stop -- 54th, 53rd, 51st, 50th, etc the driver would explain to the group getting on that when the bus exited at Roosevelt Road it would proceed north on State Street, not Michigan Avenue, the usual route. Nobody seemed daunted by the detour and ultimately the bus was full of impatient riders, buzzing with energy and excitement, eager to get "downtown." Our impatience was moderated by the knowledge that the relatively slow progress up to 47th would be made up by the short 10 minute drive on Lake Shore Drive to Roosevelt road and Grant Park.

But no! After an almost 30 minute ride from 55th to 47th streets, we came to a complete stop just south of 47th Street behind two other buses facing the intersection. Several police cars, with blue lights on were blocking the intersection preventing cars from turning either way on 47th street. Two empty CTA buses sat on the west side of Lake Park Blvd facing south. A CTA supervisor entered the bus, spoke to the driver who then announced that Lake Shore Drive was closed and that if we wanted to continue, we should get on one of the south facing buses which would go back to 55th and that bus would go west on 55th street to Cottage Grove and make its way downtown via Cottage Grove, MLK, and Cermak to State Street.

Why is the drive closed, I asked. "Secret Service has ordered it closed so Mr. Obama can leave Hyde Park and go downtown.

A big groan of disappointment and one could hear folks evaluating out loud the likelihood that they would get downtown before something great happened. should we stay home in Hyde Park? switch to the other bus? get on the metra? In the end it took about 3 minutes before almost everyone walked across Lake Park to get on one of the south facing buses the driver had pointed out.

Shortly after starting the journey back to 55th street, the driver, new and unfamiliar with the #6 route made her right turn 4 blocks too soon onto 51st Street instead of 55th Street. As soon as she made the turn, we could see the the flashing blue lights of police cars several blocks ahead, and those of use who live in Hyde Park realized that we were fast approaching the security detail assigned to the Obama home which sits on the north side of 51st street. "We can't get through!" "Turnaround." "you can't go down there" Half the bus was giving this rapidly flustered novice driver direction. I was standing right behind her and I urged her to go south on Dorchester just ahead and talked her though that detour. We drove very slowly down Dorchester, a residential street with cars parked on both sides, stopping at all the 4-way intersections along the way. Mumbling and grumbling on the bus ensued: Where are we now??? What is going on? We'll never get there."

But,after our intrepid driver turned west again onto 55th and we passed Woodlawn Avenue, we could see all the way to Washington Park and found new confidence that we would get to the south end of Michigan Avenue in time for any "historical" moments. As we turned north on Cottage Grove from 55th Street, someone called out: Yes! We are going to make it! Yes...we... can! Get.. down..town! Yes we can! Get down town! Yes we can ....yes we can. Suddenly the the entire bus was chanting and our bus driver was smiling and we were moving smoothly down MLK Boulevard heading towards Grant Park, the Hilton Hotel, South Michigan Avenue and a new day for America!. "Yes we can.. get downtown. Yes we can, yes we can." Strangers no longer, momentarily bonded by our anxiety about missing history, we finished our drive exchanging breaking news from our Blackberries and cell phones and feeling great joy created by the experience of our common dreams and passion and deep, deep desire for love, dignity and respect to return as guiding values in American life.

Tuesday was quite possibly the most amazing day of my life. I spent a majority of the day in Gary, IN as a pollwatcher. Before 6 am, the line had reached well over 250 people - there was not a cranky person in that line. From there, I headed to Grant Park, ticket in hand, to witness history. After Ohio was won, it seemed like everyone around me knew it was a wrap but I still couldn't allow myself to believe it. At 10 pm, when CNN called it for Obama, my knees went weak, and the tears started flowing. I thought about my father, who always told me I could be anything, even President, and how I would look at him and smile, because I knew that could never really happen. Thank you President Elect Obama for making it happen! Thank you for restoring hope in America! Thank you for giving a voice to those who are rarely heard. Congratulations to you and your beautiful family!

I am an alumna of the Div School (PhD 2005) who has since moved to Wisconsin for a job at as a religious studies professor at a small Catholic liberal arts college. It has filled me with pride to see Chicago, and Hyde Park, at the center of the world this week.

Our Wisconsin friends were crowded in our living room on election night, subdued but hopeful, holding hands, unable to believe it would really happen. We cheered, danced, cried and hugged when his victory was announced. I told my three children that aside from the days they were born, this was the happiest day of my life.

Later our phone rang and it was my brother (also a U of C alum) and niece calling from Grant Park. We could hear Obama speaking in the background over the phone and then a moment later those same words on our television. We felt linked, through family, through Chicago to the greatest moment in our nation's history.

Congratulations President-elect Obama, congratulations America, and congratulations University of Chicago!

I spent the morning of and the morning after doing a photo-ethnography in and between three Washington, DC (green line) metro stops: Anacostia, Shaw/Howard University and U Street. The morning of questions/comments ranged from, "you voting today?" to "vote Obama or don't vote at all!" The morning after I was encouraged by an Express Newspaper worker to, "Take a newspaper. Make a scrapbook. This is history." I also heard a black man waiting on a bus tell his fellow commuters that the day after was, "a black day." The final comment I noted was one by an approximately 50-year-old black man, talking to other men of his race and age. He stated, "after that financial sh*t jumped off they didn't talk about AIDS, they didn't talk about crime, they didn't talk about sh*t!" I have to admit I agree with him. I wrote a piece in the week leading up to the election that talked about the hope ethos surrounding Barack Obama. I hope that now that he is elected he will begin to really focus on issues such as education (particularly discontinuing No Child Left Behind), sexual assault and other community nihilism and the American poor. As I noted to my husband the other day, yes it was/is hard to fill the tank during our daily work commute; however, every day our family ate and had clothes on our backs. I was grateful that Obama won, I too voted for him, but the real test still awaits us.

It was historical, but he better live up to the hype.

Election of a Black president was long overdue. I remain extremely dubious, however, about whether Mr. Obama is the right man for the job. Switch the pigments of the candidates. Now, re-evaluate them.

I am delighted at Obama's victory. I think he will make a great President.

I campaigned for him, and voted for him in November, and voted for him three times in March:
1) our primary 2) our precinct caucus 3) our
senate district convention.

Much is attributable to his attributes, education,
and character. It is helped by those who have gone before, first and foremost, his family, but
also:
Dr. King, who I had the priviledge of hearing speak at Mandel Hall.
And onetime Hyde Park residents Paul and Emily Douglas, both wonderful stand-up people for civil rights, and equal opportunity for all. Mrs. Douglas was congresswoman, then
marched with Dr. King at Selma. Paul taught at
the University of Chicago, then during 18 years
in the U. S. Senate, led the fight for civil rights. I have an online biography of Paul on the University of Chicago www site:
www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/phdouglas.html

--John Keohane MBA '73 Labx '57
keohane@prodigy.net
Austin, Texas

The ultimate product of the infamous IL and Chicago Democratic Machine is now in charge of our nation. Maybe he'll do as well as Blago has for IL residents? Another 4 years of Jimmy Carter has just begun, hold on to your wallets fellow citizens earning more than $250,000.

I spent election day canvassing for Obama in an upscale neighborhood in Porter County in NW Indiana. When I got my precinct assignment, I thought, "Oh, brother, it's gonna be all McCain in there." In the event I was surprised at how much support for Obama I found. One moment made me smile: on the poshest street in the development next to the championship 18-hole golf course two pairs of $500K McMansions faced each other. The pair on the north side had McCain yard signs. The pair on the south side had signs for Obama.

That scene prefigured the county results. Porter County went for Obama by 5250 votes out of 72000 votes cast, almost exactly Bush's margin of victory in 2004. But the turnout in Porter County increased by 9000 voters. Obama's appeal ran up the income/education ladder as well as down.

I was thrilled by the recognition Hyde Park is getting these days as President-Elect Obama's home. During the election I had conservative friends telling me he was a thug from a city of thugs and murderers - Having spent some very happy years in Chicago and Hyde Park in the 60's, I tried to counter this but met with stone walls. Hyde Park was such a provocative, creative, inspiring place to be - to me - that I have missed it since leaving in 1965.

November 11, 2008
Gentlepersons:
This election indicated that the media and many citizens are still "racist" and "sexist" and "ageist." I voted for Mr. Obama because of his ideas, presentation and intelligence. I did not vote for him because of the color or texture of his skin, his genital structure, or how old he is - if he would have been any other hue including green with purple stripes, asexual, and as old as other candidates, I still would have voted for him.

Considering this particular date - Armistice Day - it is important to remember that good people are not defined by their skin/sex/age and bullets/bombs do not pick out what soldier/civilian to hit based on skin type, reproductive organ and whether an infant or grand parent.

When the media, which has generally stopped referring to a person's religious belief and ancestry (both were a common reference when I was young, many decades ago), ceases using similar approaches about any person's skin type/sex/age then we shall have made significant progress towards all people being created and treated equal and judged based on ideas and character.

Pete, how can you even ask such a question? This country -- and especially this University -- was built upon a system of checks and balances + the notion that having dissenting, analytical / critical thought is essential to progress! (Don't you remember your SOSC readings / Mill? :P)

The Democratic majority is pretty strong at the federal level, and it's overwhelming at all levels of government in NY. Of course, NY has always been a blue state, but I'm so tired of blind liberalism, sans critical thinking, that I've had to switch my allegiance from the NYT (which I've read religiously for years) to the WSJ just to maintain a sense of balance myself.

While expectations for "change" are high (and therefore people will inevitably be disappointed), Obama would be as blinded as Bush if he were to call upon only Dem advisers...

I felt I could understand Barack Obama, having gone to the U of Chicago and lived in Hyde Park for 13 years. I believe he is what exactly what we need at this time. The basic things he believes in, in human dignity and equal rights for all Americans, of all ethnic backgrounds, I have not heard any other politician voice so convincingly before.

NEW HOME

Resounding from ancient fields and graveyards
from farms and cities, old and new.
Shantytowns, metropolitan and hamlet--
Can you hear the music,shouting,singing?
Spitituals rising above the trees and hills--
"Go Down Moses" and "I Have a Dream."
Choruses with tears, rising to a crescendo
as we see them:

Black man with wife and children
walking toward their home---
It's the White House!

Join in---Raise your voice
Praise God!

by Wes Bergman

Hooray for Barack! It wasn't easy convincing Ohioans that he really knows what he's talking about. But he did it!

I met President-elect Obama in front of the law school in 2002 - I remember the guy who introduced us saying, "This is the next Senator from Illinois," and then-state senator Obama said, "Now let's not get too far ahead of ourselves." When people called him a celebrity and over-confident, all I could remember the humility from that day.

I volunteered in NJ, NY, PA, VA and DC. It felt wonderful to elect a real Chicago mind to the White House! Gobama!

Mariangela Anzalone AB 2005

I was at a conference in Washington DC on election day and the day after. There was some free time the afternoon the day after the election, and I went to the Mall to see the relatively new WWII memorial. The mood on the subway and on the street was amazing - there was such warmth and collegiality, at least if you were an Obama supporter! I was wearing an Obama button, and others in Obama gear would wave from across the street, or come over and say hello. Several staff members in my hotel told me it was a new day; a cafeteria cashier burst into tears telling me how wonderful she felt (and I cry easily, so I ended up crying too). It was an amazing day, and I am grateful to have been in DC for it. Back home in Massachusetts on Friday complacency reigned, and the excitement level was much more muted.
The reality of the current economic and military problems will set in again soon enough, but in more than 30 years of voting I have never had such a sense of a tidal change.
Landy Johnson, BA 1979

Having spent four years at the University of Chicago deeply involved in Hyde Park's progressive politics (New Democratic Coalition), I can truly say that Election Night was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Although I live in Norman, OK, in the only state where not one single county went for Obama, my family and most of my close friends and colleagues voted for him and we united in our joy (and disbelief that it actually happened) when his electoral votes took him over the top. My daughter worked all day in West Philadelphia getting voters on the margins of society to the polls so they could vote (for whomever they wanted) and she called me hardly able to talk through her tears of joy after the election was called for Obama. For me it is not about race or gender but about intelligence, open-mindedness, tolerance and an ability to listen and learn from others among other attributes that qualify Barack Obama to be President. Seeing the scenes in Grant Park that night made me wish I were still living in Chicago so I could have been a part of that amazing celebration. As an English woman who has lived most of her adult life in the US, I have only too often felt out of step with beliefs and attitudes of the majority of Americans (although not while studying at U of C), but not November 4, 2008!

I had gotten the impression that the only feelings leftists displayed were anger and hatred laced with sarcasm. From these postings it appears that they are now capable of maudlin sentimentality. If I read more of this, I may become nostalgic for their anger and hatred.

But if must think of a good impression that the accession of the statist junior senator from Illinois made on me, it would be the quiet dignity and determination of the African-American voters I saw when I was working as a roving attorney in Suffolk, Virginia on election day. They patiently stood in very long lines in rainy and chilly weather. They just knew that there was something that they had to do that day and they were going to do it. The consequences of their determination may not be as admirable.

I only spent one year at U of C, getting my A.M. in English Language and Literature while living at I House. But this week I feel like a true alumna of the University, and so proud of former Prof. Obama. I now live in (now blue state!) Virginia, where I canvassed for Obama one fine October afternoon. So I was euphoric to see my county, state and country turn a beautiful shade of blue to elect this amazing man with a beautiful mind. Now I hope he will be able to serve two terms, so he can undo much of the damage wrought by the abysmal Bush administration. Viva Obama!

As a Caucasian married to an African American in living in Chicago from the early 1960's thru the early 70's, we experienced our share of prejudice. Fortunately, when we attended grad. school at U of Chgo, it was more of a protected haven. I marched for Martin Luther King and supported protests against Viet Nam.

I have remarried and live in New York. Like many, I have been so impressed with Obama's mind, values, and life, and his family. My experience standing in line here in NYC eagerly waiting to vote for more than an hour seemed to be shared by so many. This city and this country again felt like a community for the first time since 9/11, but for a good reason. This gives me/us hope again, like the idealistic times from the 1960's. Thank you for letting me imagine more deeply what it was like for you. It is very moving. Louisa

As a native of Chicago and a UC alum (AM,80) I am content for President elect Obama. Unfortunately, he faces a significant, nay, daunting challenge in living up to the expectations, both nationally and internationally, that his election has raised. Domestically, of course, much of his success or disillusionment will center on the economy. However, I think the international 'honeymoon' will be short lived. I believe it was Tallyrand who said: Nations do not have friends, but interests. I would add a corollary, namely: Nations (or groups, e.g., Taliban or Al Qaeda or...) that have interests, will fight for them.

I couldn't believe my ears when President-elect and Mrs. Obama talked about his first apartment near Harold's Chicken Shack on 60 Minutes last night. I had told friends of mine that it was funny to hear the national media referring to Hyde Park as some upscale neighborhood since one of my apartments as a student there was infested by mice and another by roaches. The Obamas are real Hyde Parkers if they've struggled a bit and known the thrill of getting a hot half chicken from Harold's on a cold winter's night.

It was my fervent prayer that on election day when voters were in the privacy of the voting booth they would vote for the person best qualified by intellect and strength of character to be President of the United States and not vote based on race. My prayers were answered. Dr. King's dream of being judged by the content of one's character and not the color of their skin was realized. When I think of all of our ancestors, both Black and White, on whose shoulders we now stand who are rejoicing right now with us, I smile. It is a good time to be alive.