When the Clintons took over the White House in the 1990’s, they made a special connection with Black Americans. Now Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to be elected president, and polling data says with African-American women casting six out of every ten votes, we could be the tipping point. Journalist Isabel Wilkerson joined her on the campaign trail to see what we really think about having another Clinton in the White House. Read excerpts from her article in the November issue of ESSENCE, plus some additional quotes, plus check out Wilkerson's one-on-one with former President Bill Clinton
On first meeting her future husband – former President Bill Clinton:
It was the spring of 1971. The very first time I ever saw him, we were at Yale Law School. I had never seen him before or noticed him before. We were in the student lounge where you go to the Coke machines and get a cup of coffee and all that stuff, and I was walking through with a friend of mine, and Bill was holding forth. And, as I walked by him I heard him say, '… And not only that, we grow the biggest watermelons in the world.'
“And I turned to this friend of mine and said, 'Who is that?' And she said, 'That's Bill Clinton, and he's from Arkansas and that's all he ever talks about.' Fast forward a couple of weeks, I would see him in the hallway, and I would look at him but I never met him. And I thought he was very attractive. I mean, he was tall. At that time, he had long hair and a red beard. His hair was much more red-gold, and it was curly, and he had this Vikingesque beard.
“I was studying in the library one night, and I was bored. I was looking up, and, where I was positioned, I could see right through the door into the hallway where the stairs were. And I saw Bill standing there talking to another one of our classmates. The gentleman's name was Jeff. Jeff was talking to Bill, and Bill was looking at me, and I was looking at Bill, and I thought, this is ridiculous. So I put my books down and walked up to him and said, 'If you're going to keep looking at me, and I'm going to keep looking back at you, we should at least know our names. I'm Hillary Rodham. What's your name?' And he always says, 'I couldn't remember my name.' He's very funny about it. And from that moment on, we started dating, and we stayed together.”
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