We needed some air. The room's high ceilings had been stuffed with roping hugs and raining tears, with eyes and smiles wider than the television announcing the impossible, with raised arms and shouts of “Thank ya, Jeesus-aaa!”
The storefront office of the Black United Front was full in so many ways. We seemed to feel it all at once on the evening of November 4, 2008. And hear it.
We poured out onto the sidewalk of North Broad Street, the main artery of North Philadelphia. The entirety of this sprawling and struggling black community, blocks from Temple University, where I was a doctoral student, seemed to be out there that night, amassing on the sidewalks, or joining the parade of waving and honking older black people.
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