Local residents react to Obama’s win and landmark election in their lives

Raymond Stanberry, a heavily decorated veteran who began his military career as part of a famed all-black unit, reacted to the election of Barack Obama as president like a man contented - but tired - after a long journey.

The 80-year-old Opelika man watched the historic moment alone at his home, except for a reporter and photographer. His wife of 55 years, Julia, is in an assisted care facility suffering from Alzheimer’s. His two adult children are in Virginia.

“Robert Kennedy made a statement before he was shot (in 1968) that said you would see a black man run for the presidency in the next 40 years,” he said. “No one ever really gave that any thought until tonight.”

For Stanberry and other African-Americans of his generation, Obama’s election is a profound milestone on the long and troubled path toward racial assimilation in the United States.

Born into the Jim Crow South of separate and unequal, Stanberry has been a participant in - and witness to - history.

As a teen he enlisted in the segregated U.S. Army near the end of World War II and served in the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion.

He was there when President Harry Truman desegregated the military in 1949. Later, he was wounded in Korea and Vietnam. By the time he retired as a master sergeant in 1973, he had been awarded two Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, two Combat Infantryman Badges and a Silver Star.

He lived through the Civil Rights Movement, Selma, Birmingham and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On Tuesday, he saw something he never thought he would see - a person of color elected president.

“It hasn’t been an easy victory for Obama, and now that he’s elected, the hard part really starts,” Stanberry said. “Now, he has to produce.”

Across town, Ann Mitchell, 85, had a similar reaction. A teacher in Opelika for 35 years, she was on the front lines when public schools were desegregated in the 1960s.

Mitchell said she knew people who were turned away from polls in bygone days when election rules made it difficult for blacks to vote. On Tuesday, she was a poll worker at the Jeter Street precinct, helping people to vote.

“I’m part of it. I sure am. I’m here and living and know this happened,” she said.

The Associated Press called the race for Obama at 10 p.m. CST, when the polls on the West Coast closed. Obama supporters in Auburn rushed to paper the oaks at Toomer’s Corner.

Obama, 47, the son of a Kenyan father and white mother, held onto traditional Democratic states and beat Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the key battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Iowa.

The election turned for the first-term senator from Illinois as the U.S. economy melted down in the final six weeks of the campaign.

Democrats were also on the way to substantial gains in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Alabama bucked the national trend by remaining a heavily Republican state. The state last voted Democratic in presidential politics in 1976, when Jimmy Carter was the candidate.

While Democrats were overjoyed with the results, Republicans were glum.

“I’ve got a feeling this country is about to shoot itself in the foot,” James MaGill, an Opelika Republican said. “The country needs to go back to its grassroots, which was a country founded on God.”

Maria Ciavavella, a self-described middle-of-the-road Republican from Auburn, said both candidates scared her.

“What’s going on right now is not working, and we do need change,” she said. “But I’m afraid he’s going to try to regulate everything and lean more toward socialism.”

Obama’s election capped a meteoric rise - from mere state senator to president-elect in four years.

In his first speech as victor, to thousands at Grant Park in his hometown of Chicago, Obama catalogued the challenges ahead. “The greatest of a lifetime,” he said, “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.”

He added, “There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.”

McCain conceded in a nationally televised speech in Arizona, shortly after West Coast polls closed, saying the “American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly.”

McCain stressed the historic nature of the election, noting that an invitation to Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House by Theodore Roosevelt had been viewed as an insult in some quarters.
“Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country,” McCain said.