I voted for Obama, too.

Older citizens gathered at the inauguration ceremony were asked if Obama’s swearing in was a more historic event than Martin Luther King’s assassination, or the landing of the first man on the moon. The answers were unanimously yes. While I can’t make an accurate comparison because I was not alive to witness either of the aforementioned events, I can say that today is a day I will remember for the rest of my life, no matter how President Obama’s term goes.

Memphis, albeit a majorally black city, is still a Southern town nestled in a die hard red state, and while sentiments may have been more colorblind in cosmopolitan metropolises up the coast, the atmosphere was the same as ever in the Mid-South. Intertwined with crying black reverends praising God for such luck, uncharacteristically optimistic blues singers, and old Civil Rights advocates celebrating a new nation, were news reports of young white hicks in Arkansas arrested for plotting assassination attempts on Obama’s life, and my grandparents who still believe that our new President is a muslim extremist closely connected with Al Queda. It seems that no matter how different and changed and open-minded CNN tells me America is becoming, the same stagnated sentiments of our ancestors and Southern culture can’t help but ooze out.

Regardless, it is really cool to think that we have a president that people in other countries actually respect.




Click to see some amazing photos of the day from boston.com.