Vernita Gray, 59, is a staple of Chicago's LGBT community, a huge Obama supporter, and "Baracked" the Democratic convention, but she also recalls a different time and place. "My Grandma and I used to sit on the porch, and we'd see an airplane fly by and she'd say, 'Vernita, you think we'll ever see a black man driving one of those?'"
Gray said her biggest hope was to see the nation come together. "To me, our nation is so wounded," she said, adding, "Healing doesn't happen overnight."
Vanessa Davis, a 44-year-old blues singer, remembers her Chicago neighborhood literally burn to the ground in the wake of Martin Luther King's 1968 assassination. Later I asked whether she worried what might happen in this country if Obama doesn't win today. "The system has to work," she said. "I trust that we can accept [a loss], because if we don't accept this -- the blacks -- then it hurts everybody. I hope we can take it -- we saw a white man do it eight years ago," she said, referring to Al Gore. (Kerry Eleveld)
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