Change has come to America

Amazing.

An excerpt from his speech via the NYT.

“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,” Mr. Obama says, “tonight is your answer.” “It’s a long time coming, but because of what we did on this day, at this defining moment, change has come to America,” he says.

He framed the journey of the civil rights struggle through the person of a 106-year-old woman in Georgia, Ann Nixon Cooper, who voted today.

She was “born just a generation past slavery” but for many years couldn’t vote for two reasons, he said, shifting the attention slightly off the matter of race: “because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.”

The vivid historic symbols were hers: “She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that ‘We shall overcome.’ Yes we can.”

He shifted the focus again so that her story was not solely about race.

A man touched down on the Moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination,” Mr. Obama said, conveying the passage of time.

And then this: “And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.”

Amazing