Why Obama being President matters

Henry Louis Gates Jr of the Harvard University history department is one of the most articulate and historical thinker of our times. I have always been so impressed by his ability to tactfully articulate the emotional temperature of the African-American struggle in the U.S.. Once again, at a time when my own words cannot convey what I'm feeling today, Prof Gates succeeds. Here's an excerpt...But we have never seen anything like this. Nothing could have prepared any of us for the eruption (and, yes, that is the word) of spontaneous celebration that manifested itself in black homes, gathering places and the streets of our communities when Sen. Barack Obama was declared President-elect Obama. From Harlem to Harvard, from Maine to Hawaii—and even Alaska—from "the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire … [to] Stone Mountain of Georgia," as Dr. King put it, each of us will always remember this moment, as will our children, whom we woke up to watch history being made. My colleagues and I laughed and shouted, whooped and hollered, hugged each other and cried. My father waited 95 years to see this day happen, and when he called as results came in, I silently thanked God for allowing him to live long enough to cast his vote for the first black man to become president. And even he still can't quite believe it!