Charles Pierce:A few words about progress. And grace. And American cool.

A Moment Like This Used to Get a Black Man Killed​

...........

And, suddenly, just like that, it was done. Barack Obama had given the last great speech of his career as president. There will be other appearances on other stages—out on the stump for HRC, probably an eloquent valedictory when he leaves office—but this was the last time a really big stage would be his alone and he played it up to the rafters. They cranked the Stevie Wonder in the arena and the Louisiana delegation danced and sang along. "I've been such an instrumental part of the Obama campaign, and then to be a supporter of all his policies, to see that it's all coming to an end, but it's not coming to an end," said Senator Karen Carter Peterson, the state Democratic chairperson. "But it's not really coming to an end because we're starting another chapter with another historic moment. God is good."



“On stage a young black man, the president of the United States, warmly embraced an older white woman in front of god and all the world. It is now an iconic photograph. If it had occurred on a weed-choked street in Mississippi within the lifetime of many of the people who were cheering the moment, the young man might have been beaten, burned, hung, thrown into a river with a cotton fan tied to his neck. A song began to rise through the history of the moment:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit/Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze/Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees…

“But it was not those days any longer. The young man was the President of the United States and he has rung his changes on that song, and on an occasionally baffled democracy. Surely, he has done that.”




http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a47143/obama-speech-democratic-convention/