"This is my story, my kids' struggle," she told me, tears spilling from her eyes. "Now I know my belief that things are changing is right. I tell my sons, 'You have no excuse not to succeed.' . . . This is one of the most perfect moments in life."
On Tuesday night, when election results were announced, she felt the need for physical proof, a record of what had just happened. She snapped a cellphone photo of the television screen.
She also saved a text message her son sent during the campaign. On Friday she showed it to me:
"Rosa Parks sat, so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Obama could run. Obama is running so our children can FLY."
I read it aloud, and we both stood there crying.
I spent most of last week reporting from my hometown, Cleveland, a city that sees race in terms of black and white. Maybe that's why I was so moved when I arrived at work Friday and saw so many people from so many places waiting so patiently for their page out of history:
The white African American in the "Yes We Can" T-shirt, born in Senegal and married to a Mexican immigrant.
The Latino college professor whose students have been "reborn" because of the election results. "You can see it in their faces," he told me. "They're different people than they were the day before."
The Cambodian refugee who got teary when she talked about "Martin Luther King and the dream that came true on Nov. 4." She waited in line 40 minutes; "it was worth every second," she said. Then she stood nearby clutching her newspapers while I finished other interviews.
Her name is Anne Crosby. She works for FedEx and lives in Hollywood. She stumbled a bit when we talked, not sure whether to call Obama black or African American. But this much she knew:
"In the United States, you can be anything. This lifts people up -- the African American, the Asian, the Spanish. . . . It gives a voice to everyone."
And she knows what she will do with her newspapers. Send them to her young nieces and nephews in Cambodia, "to show them what a country I live in."
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sandy.banks@latimes.com
