To Uncle Barack:

The Official Black American Farewell to the Forever Legendary President Barack Obama.

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, I was a seventeen-year-old freshman at Hampton University, the historically black college where Booker T. Washington cut his teeth and Rosa Parks worked as a hostess. That night, my classmates and I, imprisoned by curfew in our all-male dorm, could barely contain ourselves as we awaited the most important and improbable news of our lifetimes. We were on the brink of the impossible and if Barack Hussein Obama succeeded in breaking the laws of reason and accelerating the velocity of history, the rules and steel doors of Harkness Hall would be no match for us. Joy would run wild and no dean, RA or dorm director on earth would dare try to stop us.

Of course, the campus did in fact endure a historical beating that night as every student, upon receiving the news of the win, exploded from dorm rooms and stampeded the yard chanting the words of the nation’s newest negro spiritual, “yes we can.” Words can’t cover how ape-shit we went. That energy, that time, that air, that moment was the culmination of a vast un-illustratable host of variables that felt indescribably divine. And when I say indescribable, I mean to anyone who wasn’t raised black in America. One victory made us feel relevant to the nation, made politics feel relevant to us, and made “hope” a firm, demonstrated reality. I seriously can’t overstate this. We partied like our ancestors in the secret back-wood blues clubs of the Jim-crow south. We cried and chanted into the twilight of the next morning and the high never faded.

To understand the energy that coursed through us all that evening, you need context. In a 1965 debate where James Baldwin annihilated William Buckley while arguing the question of whether the American dream had been achieved at the expense of African Americans, Baldwin summed up a particular essence of the Black American condition.

“At the moment you are born…every stick and stone and every face is white and since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose that you are too. It comes as a great shock around the age of five or six or seven, to discover the flag [to] which you have pledged allegiance, has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to discover, [that when] Gary Cooper [was] killing off the Indians [and] you were rooting for Gary cooper, the Indians [were] you. It comes as a great shock to discover the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and your identity has not in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you.”

Baldwin depicted a realization that every Black American that has ever become “woke” has experienced. That reality, for us all, is a glass wall whose existence we are oblivious to until we unwittingly smash right into it. We come of age and realize we wanted to be the Red Ranger because he was the leader, but he was not us. We were the black ranger who was only cool because he danced when he fought. We wake up and become aware that we wanted to be Luke Skywalker because he was the star and the special one, but he was not us. We were Lando Carlrissian or Mace Windu, Jedi you’ve never heard of unless you are an actual Star Wars fan. We thought we were Kevin McAllister, cleverly defeating burglars while home alone; then we found out we weren’t in the movie at all. After smashing into this previously invisible reality, we look around and realize that Baldwin was right; America had made no place for us.

Then, an abundantly educated black stone named Barack crashed into that glass wall and all but shattered it. “Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely,” said the forty two year old black senator from Chicago before delivering one of the greatest speeches the Democratic National Convention has ever seen. Four years later he was elected President of The United States of America, and he quoted Sam Cooke in his Victory Speech. And he was right; it had been a loooooooooong time coming. But change had come. We charmed America into evolving a place for us and with all her pride in democracy; she had no choice but to oblige.

Watching the first family leave hurts like hell for us all, but this thanks is personal for me. I was born and raised in the second poorest city in the nation per capita, a place always on the FBI’s top twenty most dangerous cities list. I have watched black men who could have been president bleed out on the pavement next door. I attended the lowest performing elementary and middle schools in the nation and slept in my car putting myself through college. Now, I am five months from graduating with a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown Law and I would have never applied to law school if Barack Obama did not exist. But it’s not only about me. It’s about the generation of youngsters who will never have to live in a time when a black president seems impossible. Baldwin’s glass wall is now far less formidable and every young person who ages to consciousness will take for granted that they can achieve the highest office in the land and wield that power with fairness and style.

So, to the cool, the brilliant, the composed, the soulful, the compassionate, the decisive, resolved, and dazzlingly clever story book come true, the forever legendary President Barack Hussein Obama; I say, on behalf of every brown boy, girl, man and woman in this country, and every son, daughter, grandson or grand daughter we may have, thank you and farewell.

P.S. We can’t wait to see what’s next.