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| 127 I n the spring of 2008, with a turbulent campaign in full swing for the Democratic presidential nomination, many people speculated about Barack Obama’smiddlename.Anarchconservativeandantagonisticradiotalk-show host on WLW Radio in Cincinnati embarrassed the eventual Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, during the days leading up to the crucial Ohio primary on March 4. The announcer, while introducing the senator at a rally at the University of Cincinnati, repetitively referred derisively to “Barack hussein Obama.” “How can we have a president named ‘Barack hussein Obama’?” McCain took some responsibility for the overzealous and incendiary act, roundly condemning such pandering the same day. This, of course, wasn’t all that different from charges planted in the media by the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that Obama was actually a Muslim. A photograph of Senator Obama—the first black American to become AFTERWORD Lightning, Forty Years Later 128| AFTERWORD an extremely serious contender for the presidency—appeared: he was dressed in the turban and garb of his African heritage, clothed as a Somali elder during a visit in August 2006 to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya near the borders with Somalia and Ethiopia. The racism and the fear-mongering were all part of the cultural zeitgeist that trailed the brilliant young man whose mellifluous tones and stirring words of hope and reconciliation recalled the cadence of M. L. King and the all-too-brief 1968 presidential ballad of Robert F. Kennedy. The irony was that while some focused on Obama’s middle name (and even made insidious charges that he had sworn his senatorial oath on the Koran), nobody seemed to mention his first name. Barack, in Hebrew, means “lightning.” As the senator won so many primaries that winter and spring, I called my old friend and Woodward walking mate Steve back in Cincinnati time and again. He was now a veteran reporter and analyst for the PBS radio station in Cincinnati and was closely covering the presidential campaign. He joined the press corps that interviewed Senators McCain, Clinton, and Obama on the same day in Cincinnati. He was present in the hall when the WLW host made a mockery of the introduction of McCain. We had endured so much together as fifteen-year-olds in 1968, including the assassinations, the Vietnam bloodshed, the urban riots, the explosive Democratic convention in Chicago that—minus Bobby—nominated the party standard,VicePresidentHubertHumphrey.WehadwalkedtoWoodwardHigh School day in and day out, both exhilarated and afraid, as our American world recoiled in conflict—and the one thing we could have never imagined in the spring of 1968, as King was buried in Atlanta and Bobby next to his brother in Arlington, Virginia, was that lightning would appear within our lifetimes, and that a black man would contend with a white woman as the two finalists for the Democratic presidential nomination. Even Louis Stokes was having an emotional time, as lightning flashed across the national sky. A few days before the Ohio primary, I reached the former congressman in Cleveland. We had worked together so closely for so long in Ohio and in Washington. I had been his personal guest on the White LIGHTNING, FORTY YEARS LATER| 129 House lawn on the brilliant sunny day in September 1993 when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Palestinian chairman Yasir Arafat (both since deceased, Rabin assassinated) shook hands and signed the Declaration of Principles. President Bill Clinton may have pulled the two men together a bit on the podium, but they shook hands nonetheless. Louis Stokes and I wept together, that hot day on the South Lawn—as did manyofthethreethousandguests,ambassadors,parliamentarians,diplomats, dignitaries, and soldiers. Men and women of every known color and creed, garb, flourish, culture, language, and ethnicity caught a collective breath as the two ingrained enemies shook hands. Wild applause broke out and echoed against the White House walls; I put my head into Lou Stokes’s big shoulders and there I was, for an instant, marching down the halls of Woodward High School again, banging on the bass drum, keeping in step with the wiry Clifton Fleetwood, who twirled his baton and shook his feet in a glee and freedom that transcended every set of chains set to be imposed upon us. Now, fifteen years after the faded hopes of the Oslo accords signed that day, forty years after Memphis, lightning flashed across America in 2008. So many things we had been told in high school were being...

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