Yes He Is; "He is really president."...104 year-old daughter of slave

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http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=13176

Yes He Is; "He is really president." – Florence Beatrice Stevens Smith, 104 year-old daughter of slave

January 20th, 2009 10:30 pm
Across the Country, Watching a Dream Become Reality

By Campbell Robertson / New York Times


BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — While the notable and celebrated sat in the bright cold of Washington to hear President Obama pay homage to the "men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom," many of those very men and women were sitting here on folding chairs in an enormous, darkened concert hall.

A trip to Washington had been the plan for Robbie Revis Smith, 73, twice jailed in the 1960s for her part in the civil rights struggle. But she can barely stand up now because of a bad back. So she took the bus at 7 on an atypically frigid morning to get a front row seat at the inauguration-watching event at the Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham.

The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, the 86-year-old survivor of bombing, beatings and multiple imprisonments, is as much a part of civil rights royalty as anyone. But he had only recently gotten out of the hospital. He sat upright in his wheelchair a few feet from the stage.

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Whatever the feeling was about Mr. Obama's politics, most agreed that this one-hour ceremony marked a kind of new phase in the country's 233-year history. Few would know about that better than Florence Beatrice Stevens Smith, 104, who lives at the Heartland Health Care Center in Kendall, Fla.

The community room was already packed, with residents peeking behind walkers, when Ms. Smith entered, with a red, white and blue lei around her neck. The ceremony had begun. Although several in the room dozed peacefully, the television was turned up loud enough for people down the hall to hear it from their beds.

Ms. Smith did not say much. But an employee at the home confirmed what stories in the newspaper had said: Ms. Smith had been a typing teacher at Tuskegee University in Alabama, and her father, a former slave, had served in the Union Army.

When Mr. Obama appeared on screen and began his oath, she moved forward in her wheelchair and adjusted her glasses.

"He is really president," Ms. Smith whispered, as others in the room applauded. "That's nice."

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