November 4, 2008 The Lincoln Memorial
Listen to Barack Obama's Victory speech from Chicago - November 4, 2008
November 4, 2008 - The Lincoln Memorial
On a night when some 200,000 Chicagoans gathered around a brightly lit stage under the gaze of the world's media, a slightly smaller group—twenty-six, to be exact—found their way in the dark to the marble steps of a Washington temple and stood silently around a lone transistor radio.
On the very spot where Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, and under the watchful gaze of Abraham Lincoln, they listened silently, these twenty-six men and women, some crying in the misty drizzle, as Barack Obama began his address before that incredible multitude in Grant Park.
This, of course, was the site of the original multitude, the one that bravely stood here forty-five years earlier, and as I walked quickly with my cameras towards the base of the Lincoln Memorial, I was sure I would be too late. After all, only ten minutes earlier, as I sat on my sofa in Arlington, Virginia, munching on chips and yelling at my wife to change from MSNBC back to CNN—no, wait, back to MSNBC!—I remember thinking it a crime that I wasn't part of this historic night in any way.
Having long ago traded in my photojournalist's credentials for a life of wedding photography, I figured this time around I was just a civilian a bystander to the unfolding media event, just a citizen. And then I saw those throngs of people in Chicago, crossing all those major thoroughfares in the dark. Just a citizen?
As the clock ticked closer to a new day, I knew there was still time. In the past, my need to go would have been predicated upon making a photograph, a record, something to show my daughter someday—"Daddy was there as a journalist, Alexandra"—but this time the need was far more simple: "Daddy was there."
I was out the door. Like Marian Anderson and Jimmy Stewart and Martin Luther King, I knew exactly where to go, the only place, really, in Washington. Speeding through the empty streets of Arlington, over the Fourteenth Street Bridge, and then sprinting to the area just above the reflecting pool, I arrived in no time flat. I came upon a TV crew sitting idly on the plaza, waiting, I assumed, for a mob to arrive. And in the language that is spoken and understood well among seasoned news pros, one of the three said with a slight roll of his eyes, "Nothing to see here."
I feel for him. Maybe he didn't realize President-elect Obama was speaking at that very moment, or maybe he didn't think something could be newsworthy if there isn't a quorum of other news folks there to record it. But what unfolded in front of me was anything but "nothing."
As I climbed the steps of the memorial, the silence was striking. In the center of the twenty-six strangers sat Derrick Sultzer, who is black, his arm around his partner, Brad Wilson, who is white, the two occasionally wiping tears from their eyes. In the distance, you could hear the madness of the celebration going on blocks away in front of the White House. Here, not a word, save for those coming over the radio.
"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."
What is it about people gathered around a transistor radio? In a digital age of wall-to-wall media in High Definition, there was something incredibly beautiful in that little piece of analog technology. For a fleeting moment, I thought I had somehow woken up on the Mall on that August day in 1963, to hear other words, "...that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
I took some photos but I could feel my media life slipping further away than ever. It was good to be part of something without needing to apologize. Then I gazed around some more. Surely there was someone else here— a videographer, a print reporter, a radio guy. Not a one. Though they probably never thought about it, the twenty-six had something of scoop in Washington, a profound and moving news event to themselves, of the people and by the people.
With time, the band of twenty-six began to disperse, and a new group of five Howard University School of Medicine students arrived, all wearing brightly colored Obama t-shirts. As they hugged and posed for photographs under the gargantuan statue of Abraham Lincoln, I asked one of them, Vanessa Grant, for the first words that came into her head this night and she wasted not a second: "speechless."
It's a long way, I thought, from the site of the greatest speech ever given to speechless. Thinking that even Dr. King probably got a chuckle out of that one, I smiled and with that I walked back to my car in the drizzle.
- Matt Mendelsohn
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