Obama's Win: The View from Harlem

By Jessica Bennett

Outside the Apollo Theater on Harlem's 125th Street, chants of "Obama U-S-A" echo through subway tunnels and roadways as the final words of the next president's speech--that familiar "Yes We Can"--broadcast through open windows and car radios. To describe the scene here almost sounds like a Lifetime special, except it is real: streets have been blocked off, while black, white, Latino, young, old celebrate peacefully, in multiple languages and urban dialects. "I honestly never thought I'd see this day," says Roland Jackson, a lifelong Harlem native who moved to Indiana six months ago, but came back today to vote. "It's the fulfillment of Martin Luther King's dream," says Richard Washington, 45. "Now we have a new legacy."

Beside me, two friends embrace--"change, man, change," one says, patting the back of his friend. "I'm going to cry," says Elana King, a 36-year-old Harlem native. "Not only is this historic because its a black man, but it's the first time we feel like we truly affected change."  

Amid the clanging of pots and pans, the constant blare of car horns and scattered showers from a broken fire hydrant shooting water into the air off Broadway, camera phones are almost as abundant as the Obama paraphernalia: home-made posters, self-designed T-shirts, stickers, flyers and  fountains of confetti. "Its like Mardi  Gras," says a woman.

Just a lot more historic.