Mandela Expanded The Art Of The Possible
When I was coming of age in the late 1970s, as an African-American high-schooler and college student, I had two certainties: Nelson Mandela would die in prison in apartheid South Africa and no black person would become U.S. president in my lifetime.
So much for my youthful powers of prediction.
Little could I have known then that I would become a journalist who would one day get to cover events I once thought would never happen, at least not during my time on Earth.
In 1994, I was in South Africa for the Chicago Tribune covering the campaign and election that led to Mandela's becoming that nation's first black president. Years later, I participated in that paper's coverage of hometown politician Barack Obama's journey to the White House. How much luckier could one kid from the South Bronx get?
I was fortunate because I was getting paid to witness history writ large. But also because I was observing history of particular significance to African-Americans.
The political triumphs, first of Mandela, then of Obama, were pinch-me milestones on the long march to freedom for many members of two long-oppressed groups — black South Africans and African-Americans — each of which saw something of its own story in the other's.
Even blacks who didn't belong to Mandela's or Obama's political parties, or black journalists who strove to maintain a professional skepticism, couldn't help but reflect on the extraordinary history that was taking place.
Blacks weren't alone in that, of course. But our histories as being treated at best as second-class citizens arguably made the gap between our experience, and our sense of the possible, wider than it was for many whites.
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