Civil rights veterans revel in the fruits of their struggle

WASHINGTON

Sprinkled through the crowd of more than 1 million people who watched President Barack Obama repeat the words that made him part of American history were thousands of social and political activists whose struggles laid the foundation for his success.

Tuesday was their triumph as well.

"I never thought it would happen," said the Rev. Curtis Harris of Hopewell, voicing probably the most common sentiment among civil rights veterans in the crowd.

Harris, 84, watched the ceremony from a wheelchair on a patch of the Capitol's grass. He was pushed there by a grandson born as Harris languished in Suffolk's jail after being arrested during a demonstration on behalf of black hospital employees.

"It's a great honor for me," said Curtis Harris III, now 39.

"We're the first generation who were able to reap some of the benefits of what they went through."

The elder Harris was a fixture of civil rights protests across Virginia in the 1950s and '60s, sleeping in the fields along Alabama roadsides with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other demonstrators on the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march of 1965.

He believes God intervened to see them safely through the march and then to pass the federal Voting Rights Act that helped him and other African Americans across the South gain political power. Harris ran for City Council in Hopewell seven times before winning election to a seat he still holds. He sees a divine hand in Obama's rise as well.

State Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, D-Richmond, who stood further down Capitol Hill, heard the echoes of a clergyman in the new president's inaugural speech. Obama's spent a lot of time campaigning in African American churches and listening to the rhythmic cadences of black preachers, Marsh said.

Marsh was a young lawyer in Richmond when the General Assembly decided in 1956 to defy the Supreme Court's order to desegregate public schools.

He joined the legion of black attorneys who endured harassment from fellow lawyers and the white establishment as they challenged Massive Resistance. The state legislature created a "Committee on Offenses Against the Administration of Justice" to investigate the black lawyers for barratry - the filing of frivolous lawsuits. When the lawyers fought back in court, the state backed down.

For U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott of Newport News, Tuesday was a fresh affirmation of something Virginians learned years ago: When black candidates run on the right issues, color doesn't need to be an obstacle.

Scott, 61, cut his political eye teeth as a practitioner of the "post-racial" politics Obama refined last year. A Harvard-trained lawyer and policy wonk - two characteristics he shares with the new president - Scott captured a white-majority state Senate district on the Peninsula in 1983, six years before L. Douglas Wilder became the first black elected governor in Virginia and the nation.

Scott watched Tuesday's ceremony from a choice spot, standing on the Capitol steps with fellow members of Congress a few rows behind the new president.

Then he walked across Independence Avenue and went back to work.

"Tomorrow at 9 a.m., we're going to still be facing the worst economy we've had since the Great Depression," he said. That so many would brave the cold to attend suggests Americans think Obama can turn things around, he said.

While the ceremony was "obviously historic," Scott said, what really counts for Obama's place in history is what happens next.

"It would be a shame to have his presidency be weighed only on something that happened before he got sworn in.... I would hope that, eight years from now, they're not still referring to him as the first black president.... I hope it would be the president who provided health care or education, or transportation - the president who did something."

Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com