Toot's death has inspired me to think about who got to vote this year, and who didn't.
Toot did, even though she didn't get to see the result. But there are many who did not get the chance to vote tomorrow.
Martin would have been 79.
Jack would have been 91.
Medgar would have been 83.
These are a few of the people I'll be voting for tomorrow.
There's a few more people that I know would have wanted to cast their ballot for change tomorrow.
Harriet is one of them.
The other Harriet will also be with me, as will Sojourner.
Fredrick is one of those, who told us:
Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress.
Frederick didn't get to vote tomorrow.
Lyndon would have cast his ballot with his party tomorrow, if he had made it to 100. He had, after all, given up the south for a generation, and would have been glad to vote to get it back after those long years. He was a son of a bitch, and he would have been proud tomorrow.
So it is with utmost humility that I will get up tomorrow, early, and cast my vote for Barack Obama. It is with the weight of history on my shoulders, of those great Americans who have come before me, who cannot, by circumstance or by the inevitable hand of time, cast their vote.
Abraham. Honest Abe was a solid Republican who would have been voting for the "young" lawyer from Illinois. He would have been 199, but I can't shake the feeling that he will be casting his vote with me tomorrow. He's told me:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Like Abe, I cannot say whether or not the hand of God will be on our side tomorrow. But I can pray that divine Providence will see to it that our nation begins binding the wounds of the past and strengthening our nation for the future.