16 Through 44

My grandmother lived to be nearly a hundred years old. When she was born, Theodore Roosevelt was our President—our 26th. Teddy Roosevelt was born October, 26th 1858. My Grandmother—my flesh and blood, experienced in her childhood a President who experienced Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency in his childhood.

And when I think of it that way, knowing how very real my Grandmother was, it seems a hundred years or a hundred and fifty years just isn’t much time. When I think, in ten years, I’ll have lived a third of the distance in time from now to the mid 1800’s— it seems like even less time.

And now I think of Lincoln, our 16th President and Barrack Obama, our 44th, and what changes have occurred in that short span, and it strikes me as even more remarkable in light of my Grandmother, who’s President saw it all begin.

Here are only a few stepping stones of this historic ascension... or perhaps, redemption?

• 1862, September 22nd: Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation ordering the freedom of all slaves in the Confederate States.

• 1865, December 6th: The Thirteenth Ammendment, banning slavery was passed into law

• 1866, The Civil Rights Act, extending the rights of blacks was vetoed by Andrew Johnson, then overturned by Congress to extend the rights of black Americans. The act clarified that black Americans were legal citizens of the United States (though blacks were clearly not afforded the same rights as anglo Americans).

• 1868, July 9th: The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, overruling Dred Scott v. Sandford which held that slaves and their descendants could not posses Constitutional rights; the Amendment expanded on previous reconstruction legislation providing a broader definition of citizenship as it applied to black Americans. Its equal protection clause required each state to provide equal protection for all citizens under the law and was a critical foundation for desegregation and the landmark case Brown vs. The Board of Education.

• 1870, February 3rd: The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, ordering that no government in the United States shall prohibit a citizen from voting based on their race.

• 1957 Civil Rights Act establishes the Civil Rights Commission.

• 1960 Civil Rights Act allowed for Federal oversight of voter registration polls and created penalties for obstructing any citizen from voting. It was a futher measure to stop the rampant thwarting of blacks from registering and voting which had gone on since Reconstruction.

• 1964 Civil Rights Act was signed into law by Lindon B. Johnson. The sweeping legislation outlawing racial segregation, ending the southern Jim Crow laws. The legislation also implemented the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

• 1968 Lyndon B. Johson signs the Fair Housing Act which protected blacks and other minority groups in their acquisition of housing. It identifed the practice of ‘redlining’ by mortgage banks and made illegal the common practice of purchase contracts that precluded buyers from subsequently selling their home to a black person.

• 1991 Civil Rights Act expanded the rights of empoyees suing employers for descrimination.

• 2008, Barack Obama elected President.

Regardless of the inequalities that remain, the precedence of this election establishes that no minority will ever again be prevented from the highest ascention of power or social esteem; the road for minorities may not be equal, but now, it is undeniably possible.