There is an angel of change over America. It has been here for some time but
only the young in spirit noticed. I became more sensitive to it during the
rally. I was a bit ill as well, because I’d come down with a bug, and in my
altered state I saw that there was something different about the air of the
country, It was as if a new consciousness was seeping into the land.
The rally is over and I face a three-hour drive in the dark to my next
destination. I remind myself that I am in Virginia, in the South, home to
the earliest slave plantations. I decide to spend a night in a local hotel.
I eventually find one, but it appears so desolate, so out of the way that I
fear I might be murdered in my sleep.
Normally I’d be nervous of travelling in the South. In spite of my fundamental
idealism about the human spirit, I am not unaware that often lurking beneath
the surface of society is the untransformed nightmare of history. But I am
ill, and there is something new in the air, and I go forward with faith. It
turned out to be a likeable enough hotel. There was a crowd of casually
dressed people at the lobby. Many of them were black. I took them for
remnants of a sales convention or a basketball team on an away game. It
turned out that they were the secret service people who were looking after
Obama. “That’s just some of them,” said Greg, the friendly male
receptionist. “The rest are in other hotels in town.” I slept easy knowing
that the secret service was near by.
We were served dinner by a lively young lady, who told us the place was in a
deep recession. I asked how she knew and she said that people had stopped
coming to eat, and when they did they left no tips.
There is always a battle raging across America, a battle of ideas that began
with its founding. In every election the ambiguous origin of America plays
out its ground notes and sombre themes in the double heart of its nature.
One heart lives in Plymouth, the other in Jamestown, Virginia. And Jamestown
is the foundation stone of America. Its rich, complex history began there,
with all its good and evil. To get a sense of the new pulse of the country
it seemed necessary to listen to the heart of its origins.
We drove to Jamestown in a Technicolor blaze. The scenery was ravishing and
there was a strong overhead sunlight upon the valleys of green. Red oaks,
cedar trees, and poplars were in a burst of golden and red autumnal colours.
The landscape is so beautiful it ought to make poets of the most prosaic
souls.
We arrive and the white gentleman tells us that the place we are seeking is
imaginary. Just a building, and beyond it the river. I see later what he
means. Jamestown was the site of the first landing of English settlers in
1607. They came looking for gold and the Northwest Passage. It was also the
first place where Africans were brought from Angola and the Congo, first as
indentured labourers and then as slaves. This was also Indian territory,
home of Pocahontas. This, the first colony, with its racial mix, set the
tone of the nation’s troubled racial history. Now there is only a museum
there built to celebrate the 400th anniversary.
I am told by a lady at the ticket office that it has always been a Republican
area on account of the military bases. Also people are drawn here for their
retirement. But even here something is changing. The last four years and the
economic crisis have made the Democrats more attractive. A huge
African-American gentleman tells me he feels that at last America is
returning to its true self. “Doing what is right, electing for the candidate
rather than his colour.” I tour the replica of the Susan Constant,
the first English ship that landed here. A young man named Scott, a staunch
Republican gave me a history lesson. The first settlers came to make money,
he said. Others tell me more. It seems that greed, tobacco, and slavery were
the foundation of the Republic.
There seems an odd synchronicity to events across time. In the early days
Jamestown was important as a military base. In a lesser way, it still is.
Not far from here the British were defeated and thrown out of America.
Jamestown thrived, the Indians suffered, and then it succumbed to the
ravages of “fire, war and carelessness”. Then it vanished from the face of
the Earth. Only a church tower was left standing.
The museum is a wonderful structure made of light brown wood. It is spacious
and designed with taste and conviction. The Queen was here last year and was
treated to a military display.
Many people here agree on one thing. The early settlers would turn in their
graves if they knew that a black man was within reach of the White House.
It is ironic and a little cheeky that while McCain is a military man, it is
Obama who has done the outmanoeuvring. In many ways Obama’s campaign
displayed the strategies of classical military warfare: making excursions
into the enemy’s territory, forcing them to extend their lines; offering
false targets; demoralising them with mysterious confidence; limiting their
resources; fighting them on multiple fronts at the same time. Obama’s
campaign was audacity itself from the very beginning. It seems audacity is
the watch word of the intelligent underdog. Muhammad Ali used it against
Sonny Liston; Sugar Ray Leonard used it against Marvin Hagler.
In America it is not possible to overestimate the colour black. It goes with
the territory that black is naturally underestimated. But many generations
have passed on and distilled the intelligence necessary for a transformation
of black. Sooner or later someone was going to accomplish a miraculous
triangulation. I find it interesting that the one with the greatest number
of contending elements to overcome is the one who would overcome the most.
The fact is the moment that lean, determined young man stood up and walked
into the centre of the presidential ring, he was going to alter the lines of
force in the land. Behind audacity there must be authority. The whole of the
American election revolved around a single element: the mystery of
authority. Throughout the election Obama just seemed to convey more
authority than McCain. Authority without explanation is the heart of
charisma.
If Jamestown is where America was founded, Williamsburg is where America
became itself. We drove past chaste-looking churches and quaint colonial
mansions with yachts on the lawns. There were Obama flags stuck in the grass
and McCain flags attached to trees. We drove into a town that was beautiful
in a dreamlike sort of way. The houses were big and clean and white.
Everything looked like an extraordinary stage set, like something out of De
Chirico. When we arrived at our hotel I decided to go and investigate the
town.
Everything was quiet. It seems like it’s always Sunday in Williamsburg. The
houses were white and the doors had no handles. It felt like a ghost town.
The lawns were perfectly cropped. It seemed like there had been a sudden
mass desertion. One had the feeling of being watched from behind those
silent windows. Unnerved by this perfect place, I caught a glimpse of a
woman, in a 17th-century costume, who promptly disappeared. This went on for
a while. It was only later when I came up to another woman walking up and
down without purpose that I learnt that this was the largest open-air
17th-century museum in the world. The whole town is built, and preserved, as
it used to be in 17th-century Virginia. One mile long and across, it is
replete with a town hall, taverns, tobacco shops and residential quarters.
In this town too is staged, every day, a ritual of the collapse of the royal
government and the birth of modern America. This pageant is staged with
horses and carriages and dozens of actors. Here was the first capital of
Virginia until it moved to Richmond during the Civil War. This is where the
War of Independence was declared. And today is Independence Day in ritual
Williamsburg. I speak to a black actress in the pageant. She is not dressed
as a slave, she tells me, but a free woman. Can she vote? She says in the 17th
century she can’t. But today she is excited by the elections. A gentleman
dressed simply as a colonial tells me he is undecided. I ask if the election
is a challenge to the fundamental idea of America, and he says it is about
the fundamental idea of the land, the notion of diversity.
But back at the hotel, the look of the room-service lady when I asked her
about the elections spoke of something else. It spoke of fear. The fear of
someone who thinks even their thoughts are monitored. Looking furtively
around her, she told me she hoped Obama would win. “But nothing’s changed
around here that I can see,” She said. “It’s still Republican.” I know that
fear. It hints at long, quiet suffering. And that was the day they aired
Obama’s 30-minute television ad that cost a million dollars and held up the
big game. It was an exquisite ad, he was presidential, and many of the white
men in the bar walked out after it came on.
We left Virginia and flew to North Carolina. On the flight an air hostess who
loved the sound of her voice got us all to clap for the servicemen on board.
We caught another flight and arrived weary in Memphis on the day when all
the spirits, witches, demons, wizards and avatars were out. A witch, in
fact, checked us in on our military plane. We fetched up in Memphis into a
storm of Hallowe’en celebrations. The famous Beale Street had a carnival
atmosphere. The Memphis Grizzlies had won the first match of their season.
Meanwhile the negative campaigning from McCain got worse, while Obama,
unruffled, talked about the economy. The election had its extreme moments:
Obama signs are sprayed with the n-word or KKK. The shadow of strange fruits
on trees lingers in the air.
What is it like to be on the cusp of change? The mood of a momentous event
before it happens is revealing. Forty years after the assassination of
Martin Luther King, who said he would not get to the mountaintop, America is
finally making the historic climb to a new era. A white American student
from Kansas said the nation was ready for Obama. The Afro-Americans that I
spoke to were almost prayerful for their candidate. Elvis is everywhere. He
is the lingering deity of Memphis. But this is also the home of the Blues,
and blacks here are more upbeat than their brothers and sisters in rural
Virginia.
Across the nation people are addicted to the historic nature of the election.
Someone called it the longest-running reality show and soon we’re going to
find out who gets to stay. Two armies of ideas waged their battle in the
landscape of our minds, our prejudices, our hang-ups, our hopes. Elections
reflect a people profoundly, mirror their concerns, reveal the courage or
cowardice of an age. In retrospect a people are always proud of having voted
in charismatic leaders who enriched their country in palpable ways. America
congratulates itself on its Kennedys, its Roosevelts, its Lincolns. A good
president is the accomplishment of the people; a bad president is its shame.
Elections are psychodramas, in which the deepest aspects of the nation are
played out in full view.
That’s why I came to a place in Mississippi called Mound Bayou. It is the soul
of the African-American story. Mound Bayou is to African-Americans what
Plymouth is to the American Dream.
Imagine a mosquito-infested piece of land between two swamps. Imagine 13
ex-slaves, men and women, turning up here. The women are armed with guns.
With the men they cut down trees, build the first huts, and work their
indomitable will against that Mississippi wildness. But these are no
ordinary ex-slaves. They came with a Utopian dream. They wanted to found a
community different from any in America. They would be self-governing. There
would be no police. They would run their lives on the highest values. The
community grew and prospered under the guidance of their founding fathers.
Banks and businesses flourished. Teddy Roosevelt came by and called them
“the jewel of the Delta”. They were the largest cotton-producing community
in the world. They were a shining symbol of what forward-looking black
people could accomplish on their own.
Then, mysteriously, things went wrong. The founder, T. Montgomery, a lawyer,
died. The banks were closed, businesses failed, and people stopped coming.
Many reasons are given. Some say state racism. Some say political
infighting. Others say endemic corruption, self-sabotage. Mound Bayou fell
into dereliction, and was forgotten. And then one morning I stumbled into
this place and found the symbolic heart of these elections.
Mound Bayou is full of stories, histories, of ghosts, even of futures. This is
a town of whispers. Everywhere you turn history speaks through the
dilapidation. The founder’s house is in crumbling disrepair and there is a
clean skeleton of an animal, a small mysterious dinosaur, in front of his
neglected grave. There are broken-down cars everywhere and barbers shops
with broken windows and slashed swivel chairs. This is a town of a
population of 2,000 people. Kids play basketball on a meagre court. A drunk
staggers down an empty street. There’s a corner where drug dealers operate.
For such a small, dilapidated town there are a lot of churches. And nature
is lush amidst the striking poverty. It almost breaks your heart standing in
a field or in a street, looking clear across this run-down town of dust and
dreams. You almost want to weep for its vanished glory and its failed
experiment. This should be an icon of black history.
I met 96-year-old Preston Holmes. He stands straight as an arrow. He is full
of anticipation at the election. “I am proud of America,” he says, “for
putting preparation ahead of pigmentation”. He was one of those millions who
made anonymous contributions to Obama’s campaign funds. “I am not used to
this America that now votes for a black man,” he said. He has lived through
a long history of segregation.
But Daryl Johnson, flower seller and pastor of the “walk of faith” church is
the one who told me the story of Mound Bayou. “The presence of Obama,” he
said, “revolutionises the black man’s mind, the old plantation mind from the
South. We don’t have to be what we used to be”. He also delivers a cracking
sermon. “The sun is shining on the inside of my mind because of what I know
is going to happen.”
At the First Baptist, oldest church in town, pastor Earl V. Hall dealt with
the election in his sizzling, dramatic sermon. “They say that Obama is
inexperienced. As if the rest of them have been president before!”
His sermon is a riff on Psalm 23, gathering in, with magnificent crescendos,
the relevant issues of the times. “Some say they won’t vote for Obama
because his life might be threatened. But vote, for we all walk through the
valley of the shadow of death . . .”
In all my journeys across the country to see how the possible election of a
black president resonates in the land and its ideals, here in Mound Bayou
was the first time I felt I was in the heart of America. Not in the lush
glories of Virginia, nor the carnival mood of Memphis, but here in this
poor, broken place where once shone a dream of freedom. Here is the secret
history of America. They may not think so but this place is the core of what
the election is about. The low places must be raised up or all are secretly
low. There is no one the elections will be more keenly liberating than Mound
Bayou. Those 13 ex-slaves who set out to civilise a swamp will be cheering
with a special jubilation to see their dream at last realised in the highest
office in the land. Then maybe a new history can spring forth in that black
Utopia that time forgot.
I arrive in Chicago on the eve of the elections with a sense that America is
on the verge of a mental revolution. Those who speak of history say that it
is as significant a revolution of the mind for America to transcend race as
to go to the Moon. Human overcoming is harder than the scientific.
And yet something strange was happening in those places I went. Whenever I
asked black people about the election they mostly smiled. They beamed. It’s
some kind of special gift to give a people something at last to smile about.
Can we speak of an African-American century, by which I mean a century in
which black people can at last play their full part in the story of the
American civilisation without being weighed down by colour? If so the
Promethean fire that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King died for has
finally been handed over to our times.
Chicago is a city of contrasts. There is something magnificent about its air,
its modernity. On the great day there is an extraordinary mood of
expectancy. The sky is unbelievably clear and the sunlight is astonishing,
especially for this time of year. People came out in great numbers and voted
early. The scale of early voting was unprecedented. Getting people to do
this was an important strategic element. There is a special intensity about
election days. The dreams of a land are aquiver. And when dreamers awake the
wisdom of the dead and the warning of the unborn sometimes speak in their
votes. But there is a special silence on election day, the silence of long
queues, people waiting patiently to deliver their summation or judgment.
The weather was perfect, as if good weather puts people in the right mood to
make the best decisions. It was a day of great beauty. It seemed more like a
revelation day than an election day. A new America was going to be revealed.
It was also a strangely peaceful day. It felt more still than a normal day.
Someone called it the lull before the storm. Sunlight had never seemed to me
more pure. Then, in the evening we converged at Grant Park. I have seen
gatherings in my time but nothing like this. The young with all manner of
Obama T-shirts, people of all races. Hundreds of thousands of us poured into
the park. It was more packed than a rock concert. There were signs
everywhere saying: “Yes We Did!”.
I t was a clear night with a cool breeze, and all of humanity was there, the
old, the disabled, the blind, the fat, the thin, but mostly the young. It’s
as if they had been newly grown in a hope farm and unleashed on a historic
night. We stood ringed round by a semicircle of skyscrapers with stars
alight on all the floors like some kind of futuristic city. We stood under
gigantic screens that gave the results, and with each win for Obama great
cries would rock the sky. It turned out to be a long night. Sometimes
nations forget who they are, forget their better natures, Sometimes nations
get tangled in the neuroses of their mixed heritage. Many nations lose their
way for decades and never quite find themselves again. But great nations who
have lost their way feel the throb of the missing magic which made them
great. And when someone comes along who embodies that which was lost, a
wonderful synchronicity takes place that’s almost like a fairy tale. Then it
seems as if all the stars are lined up to make possible the revelation of a
nation’s highest self to itself. Then the nation starts to fall in love with
itself again, and the healing takes place between its contending sides. The
world was awaiting such a moment.
At 10pm, there was a massive applause and cheers when Obama took Virginia. One
minute later when it was announced that he’d taken California and it was
projected that Obama was now President-elect, the tumultuous cheer from the
crowd was so loud that it could have been heard on the Moon. Those outside
said that the spontaneous jubilation sounded like a great explosion in Grant
Park. And then a quarter of a million people fell into a dream of joy
bordering on delirium. People hugged one another, and wept. There was a
forest of waving flags. A thousand lights stunned the air. The satellites
were overwhelmed with the volume of mobile phone calls. A man shouted over
and over: “The whole world is watching.” On the screen Jesse Jackson burst
into tears. In the crowd black ladies sobbed for joy. The fall of the Berlin
Wall, Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, those were historic mountains.
But Obama’s election as president was probably the first great historic
moment with a positive charge in the 21st century.
One of the outstanding elements to Obama’s campaign is how much he learnt from
the mistakes of others. He learnt to be financially free. He learnt the
value of innovation. He conducted his campaign flawlessly, and always with
dignity. He began his campaign like jazz – “yes we can” –
but he sustained it in a classical mode. He learnt to unify all the
different peoples and concerns. He combined the black and the white, and
wove a new whole. He alchemised his advantage, was clear in his policies,
grounded in the issues, and left nothing to chance. He used the Excalibur of
will with the grail of intelligence. Lao Tzu said: “He who knows the white
and yet keeps to the black will become the standard of the world.” The
secret was to triangulate, and to represent in a shining way, the magic
power of hope. He solved the difficult mathematics of the American heart. He
compelled and charmed America into a wider definition of humanity.
But that was a night in which the nation surpassed itself. And its celebration
was finally the celebration of its democratic genius. I saw in that oceanic
tide eyes that had been touched with some kind of wonder. Happiness was made
visible in the multitudes. Maybe they have altered time, and brought an
alternative reality into being, literally changed their own destiny by a
tremendous act of will. They had crossed the legendary moment and become, in
effect, a new people.
The mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote that “if you have the guts to follow the
risk, however, life opens, opens, opens up all along the line”. America has
followed its bliss. If I were asked what most struck me on that day I would
say that, in the end, some kind of beauty won the election. And beauty
walked the night, by the thousands, going home to a new day.
One ought to put one’s life at the service of a beautiful thing.
