Jesse Jackson on Barack Obama: “I cried all night. I’m going to be crying for the next four years,” he said. “What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history. … The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance.”
John Lewis, the only living person to have spoken at the lectern the day the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, on what King would have thought: “He would have been very, very pleased. He probably would have said, ‘Hallelujah!’”
Jim Clyburn: “I thought this day would come, but I didn’t think I’d live to see it. I got home, and I was so emotional I couldn’t feel myself. I was numb.” He poured himself a Jack Daniels and Diet Coke and watched Obama speak.
And my favorite line, from a reader of Andrew Sullivan: “Tomorrow I will go to the African American cemetery outside of Chicago where my great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, and my mother and father are buried. And I will tell them that they were right — that if we studied hard, worked hard, kept the faith, fought for justice, prayed, that this day would come.
And it has.”