'A vision that did not perish'

Charles Oliver

November 05, 2008 07:25 pm

— Eugene Miller admits he sometimes doubted that a black man would ever be elected president of the United States.
“Yes, I had my doubts it would ever happen in my lifetime, but I thank the Lord he let me see it happen,” Miller said Wednesday.
Miller, a former president of the Whitfield County National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and other Dalton area residents reacted to the election of Barack Obama.
Miller, who operates Miller Brothers Rib Shack, notes that the walls of that restaurant are covered with photos of civil rights leaders.
“These people had a vision that someday this would come about. You know the Bible says people without a vision perish. But they had a vision that did not perish,” he said.
Miller said he hopes younger people, born after the civil rights era of roughly the 1960s, understand just how far the country has come.
“You know there aren’t enough black people to put (Obama) in office. So the change has come through all people,” he said. “I hope people will see the Lord had his hand in this. This change wasn’t brought about by one race. This change was brought about by America.”
Miller says Obama’s election sends a clear message to young people.
“There’s no goals they should be afraid to set for themselves. They should set their goals high with an intention of reaching them,” he said. “If Obama had thought that a black man could never be elected president — if he’d had that mentality — he wouldn’t be where he is today.”
Minnie Marsh’s voice sometimes broke up as she discussed watching the election returns come in.
“I was just elated to sit there and see history being made,” she said.
Marsh grew up in Dalton in the 1950s and 1960s, when Jim Crow laws mandating racial segregation were enforced.
“Everything was separate. Schools were separate. Public accommodations were separate. We couldn’t even go to a movie together. We had to sit in a separate area,” she said.
She was in high school when Georgia finally integrated its public schools, but just two months before she graduated, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
“It’s hard to put into words just what we went through. We saw the beginnings of Dr. King’s dream coming true, then we saw him taken from us,” she said.
Marsh would later become the first black elected to the Dalton Board of Education.
She said Obama’s election sends a message to young people, of all races and colors, that people can live together.
“We can be united and work together. And another message he is sending is that they should have hope. Their dreams and aspirations can become a reality,” she said.
“We’ve come a long ways, but we still have a ways to go,” she said.
Former Dalton City Council member Terry Christie said he hasn’t been as excited about an election since John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960.
“I see a reinvigoration of this country,” he said.
Christie grew up in Florida, then culturally a Southern state, during the Jim Crow era.
“The first black person I ever went to school with was in graduate school,” he said. “I came all the way through kindergarten to graduate school and was never in a school with a black person.”
Christie said the country has come a long way since then, but it still has further to go.
“But the impact of what happened last night can’t be overstated,” he said.

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