A New Kind Of Hope

When I visited my relatives in the D.C. (Deep Country) areas of South Carolina, one thing I always noticed when I was younger was that in practically every shotgun hovel, cinder block house, and mobile home we went to, they all had three things in common:

A picture of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesus Christ (the long haired white version).


Hope and liberation.


So last week, Thanksgiving found me back in the D.C., back in the heart of the same territory my relatives have inhabited for generations. The contingent that had migrated to New York and Philadelphia and the real D.C. had descended upon my aunt’s house, as usual, to break bread with one another and give thanks with their family.

It is amazing what urban living could do to your northern kin folk, people who shared the same DNA you had, who grew up picking cotton and cropping tobacco in the same fields with your parents when they were all children. The city folks seemed to have become more alert, more aware, with sharpened reflexes and keener eyes.

This year, though, everybody, southerners and northerners alike, seemed to radiate the same dialed in vibe, the same level of hyperkinetic energy just under the skin. It was as if no one could wait to express how excited they were that Barack Obama had become the next president.

The regular greetings - “hey, how you doing? Everybody doing okay? You look like you haven’t been missing any meals” – were truncated, with a big pause after “hey, how you doing?” that led right into “I just feel so good”.

A distant aunt from New York, sixty something years young, upright and spry in an athletic outfit, was circulating among us, giving each of us a hug and a calendar. “These are all over Brooklyn.” she said as she handed me and the gaggle of cousins around me calendars with a fuzzy picture of Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama superimposed over the presidential seal.

I recounted the hope and liberation story to my brother later as we traveled to another house full of relatives we hadn’t seen in a year. “You know,” I said to him as we motored along a network of impossibly dark country roads, “I guess all those Kennedy pictures will be coming down soon. Gonna have to make room for a new kind of hope.”