Black President

Early evening settles on a quiet suburb of spacious homes and lush lawns. Suddenly, an ominous voice pierces the tranquillity: America is about to elect the first black president of the United States. Within seconds, the streets flood with hundreds of panicked white people running from their homes. One man stops and lifts his face to the heavens, his arms outstretched, face etched with fear.

Growing up poor and black in Mississippi, Gerri Hall learned there was a meanness in the world, a set of laws and customs aimed at people like her, which her mother tried to explain once when they were forced to stand aside and let a white lady use the sidewalk. "Honey," Hall remembers her mother saying, "that's just the way it is in Mississippi. " But there was also love and pride and determination in rural Greenwood, along with a belief that things could and would eventually change — and the way to change them was within her grasp.

Iam shocked by the commentary on the prominence of race as a theme in the Democratic Party primaries. Shocked not because race is a theme but because so many in the media seem to think that race would not be or should not be mentioned. It is as if we think that not speaking about race is the equivalent of making progress on race issues.

Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti announced Thursday he is backing Councilman Herb Wesson as his successor, a move that could pave the way for the council to elect its first African American president in its 161-year history. Garcetti, who is running for mayor, said he would introduce a motion Friday calling for Wesson to become president at the council's first meeting in January. Wesson, 60, has already signaled interest in the job, and supporters hope to put six other signatures on the motion — enough to show that a majority of the council supports him. The maneuvering comes two weeks after the abrupt resignation of the council's president pro tem, Jan Perry, who said she did not like behind-the-scenes negotiations over the presidency and the upcoming process for redrawing council district boundaries.

A lot of liberals say they're not supporting Barack Obama in the primaries because an African American can't carry the South in the general election -- which is a liberal's clever way of saying that he won't vote for a black person. But, it seems, they're wrong. Because while Iowa and New Hampshire aren't technically in the South, they are full of hicks, which is what rich liberals actually mean when they refer to "the South."

Funeral services were held Monday in Salisbury, N.C., for Elizabeth (Libby) Duncan Koontz, the first black president of the National Education Assn. and former head of the Women's Bureau under President Richard M. Nixon. Mrs. Koontz died of a heart attack Friday at her Salisbury home. She was 69. A former teacher of mentally handicapped students, Mrs. Koontz became president of the NEA in 1968. She resigned a year later to work in the Nixon Administration.

The Unitarian Universalist Assn. elected its first black president in the denomination's 40-year history at its annual convention in Cleveland. The Rev. William G. Sinkford, 54, won by a 2-1 margin--2,218 votes to 1,043 votes--over the Rev. Diane M. W. Miller, who would have been the first woman president. Miller has been director of ministry since 1993. Sinkford succeeds the Rev. John A. Buehrens, who served two four-year terms.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is likely to elect its first black president during its four-day meeting that begins today. Diversity also will be the focus, and the group will renew the church's fight against abortion while proposing a day of prayer for peace as the war in Afghanistan continues. Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of Texas is finishing his three-year term as head of the group, which serves as the church's national voice on social, political and religious issues.

In the 1960s, Irving Wallace wrote a novel called "The Man," in which the sudden deaths of the president, vice president and speaker of the House bring to power a most unlikely occupant of the Oval Office: Sen. Douglas Dillman -- a black man. Thanks to the election of Barack Obama, a black president in Washington fiction will be no more exceptional than one in real life. "Before Obama, you wouldn't have gotten away with simply having a black president and having that on the periphery.

Illinois state Sen. Rickey Hendon served eight years alongside Barack Obama in the state Capitol and plans to endorse him today when Obama launches a bid for the White House. But that does not mean Hendon has set aside the long-simmering doubts that he and other black leaders hold about a man who could become the first African American to occupy the Oval Office. "I can endorse someone now and change my mind next week," Democrat Hendon said from Springfield, Ill., where U.S. Sen. Obama (D-Ill.

Known to Evil A Novel Walter Mosley Riverhead: 326 pp., $25.95 Walter Mosley's last novel, "The Long Fall," was the detective fiction equivalent of a system reboot, a riff on the author's favorite brand of story. Instead of Los Angeles, we have New York; instead of the past, there is only the present (or, at least, the 2008 variety of present). Instead of Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins stumbling through tumultuous social change with lethal sidekicks and an unorthodox family, meet Leonid Trotter McGill, "a survivor from the train wreck of the modern world" who stumbles through his own prolonged internal crises backed by a lethal sidekick and a most dysfunctional family.

How you react to "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," a new documentary premiering tonight on HBO, will be largely a matter of how you feel about Obama himself, and his election and presidency. (Birthers, come not here.) That the film itself is partial to its subject -- not just Obama but the army of campaign workers and supporters who put him in the White House and who are the meat of the film -- is clear even before you watch it: Taking a cue from the campaign's own playbook, HBO's website asks viewers to "spread the word" and "promote this film from your blog or Facebook page."

In his first address to civil rights leaders since his election, President Obama on Thursday marked the centennial of the NAACP by paying tribute to its history and calling on activists to tackle modern-day problems. Obama told the organization's members that only because of their forerunners could he stand before them as both an African American and president of the United States.

On his HBO show, "Real Time With Bill Maher," the comedian routinely makes vicious fun of celebrities, politicians, presidents and even God. But he's learned that, for much of his audience, Barack Obama is off limits. Not long after the historic presidential election, Maher joked that Republicans were feeling particularly superstitious: "They say the country is having bad luck because there's a black cat in the White House."

A rainbow runs through Tyler Winograd's veins. His mother, Maile, is half black and half Chinese American. His father, Jeff, is white and grew up Jewish in Evanston, Ill. "I always check 'Other' on my college applications," Winograd said. But on election day, Winograd was filling out a different kind of form. The 18-year-old accompanied his parents to the polling place across the street from their Glencoe, Ill., home to cast a ballot for president for the first time.

Re "The day Vietnam changed," Opinion, Nov. 22 Gordon M. Goldstein's Opinion piece raises some interesting questions about whether John F. Kennedy would have withdrawn U.S. forces from Vietnam if he had lived. Ultimately, that is unknowable. However, to me, the most interesting comment made by Goldstein was that if Kennedy had lived, "he would not have had Johnson's grand liberal agenda of Great Society legislation to ram through Congress." That's absolutely true. But we should remember that the most enduring legacies of Johnson's Great Society were the civil rights and voting rights bills that he "rammed" through Congress.

The "first black president" is coming to California, and thousands of people who feel like Bill Clinton is family will get up before sunrise Saturday to try to get a glimpse when he signs 1,500 copies of his autobiography, "My Life," at Eso Won, an independent bookstore in Southwest Los Angeles. Of course, Clinton isn't really black. But his bond with African Americans goes well beyond politics. Many believe he's one of them. He grew up in Arkansas eating collard greens and sweet potato pie.

Corey Flournoy grew up in a rough part of Chicago, and only grudgingly went off to the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences when it was the only public magnet high school to accept him. Now Flournoy, 20, is the national president of the FFA, once known as Future Farmers of America--the group's first urban president and its first black president.

Barely three weeks since America elected its first black president, noose hangings, racist graffiti and death threats have struck dozens of towns across the country. More than 200 such incidents -- including cross burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of President-elect Barack Obama -- have been reported, according to law enforcement authorities and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.

Re "Women, interrupted," Opinion, Nov. 9 Whoever thought a woman would win the presidential election in 2008 wasn't paying attention. A CNN poll in the spring showed that 76% of Americans believed the country was ready for a black president, but only 63% felt the same about a female president. Shirley Chisholm wasn't exaggerating when she said, "I've always met more discrimination being a woman than being black." Vinette Gleason Mission Viejo