By Stacey Patton:

I’m 30 years-old and on November 4th, 2008 I cast a vote for president for the first time in my life. Before then, voting didn’t seem worth it.  I fit the stereotype of Generation X – apathetic, disconnected from politics, and devoid of respect for history.

It turns out, all I needed was inspiration and to exorcise the distrust I had about the political process.

Stacey Patton

During my primary years I attended a private suburban Lutheran school that made no distinction between church and state. We heralded the life of Martin Luther, a German monk, reformer, and theologian whose ideas shaped the Protestant Reformation during the 17th century. We memorized the Apostles Creed and all 66 books of the Bible in alphabetical order. We sang Christian songs. We prayed. We got snatched into the coat closet and spanked with a ruler when we acted out. And we held mock presidential elections every four years.

In 1985, I was a seven-year old second- grader excited to cast my vote into the little white box on my teacher’s desk.  Our choices were the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, who was running for re-election, and the incumbent Democrat, Walter Mondale.  Throughout my entire childhood, the African Americans in my world always told me to vote for the Democrats because they cared more about Black folks than the Republicans.  And sometimes I was told that the Democratic candidate was the lesser of the two evils.

Out of the 15 students in my class, I was the only child to cast a vote for Walter Mondale.  I knew nothing about him or his policies and cared little about politics. I was merely participating the way I had been taught by the adults in my life.

When our teacher held up the one ballot cast for Mondale, she shot us all a very curious look and asked, “Who voted for Walter Mondale?” My classmates chuckled, shifted in their seats and gazed around the room until their eyes landed on my distraught face.

“I did,” I mumbled.  The chuckling got louder.  Even at age seven, I was a rebel and nonconformist.

“Ms. Patton, why would you vote for Walter Mondale when the rest of your classmates know that Ronald Reagan is going to win?”

“’Cause he’s a Democrat.  And the Republicans don’t like Black people,” I responded.

Shocked at my response, my teacher told me that I was being absurd.  After all, the Republicans are the party of Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, she explained.

I was immediately turned off from political participation and from that moment forward I believed that I’d never have a voice in politics and my vote would never matter because of my race and my youth.

But on November 4th, all that changed when I participated in American history by casting my vote for the first time in a presidential election.  I understood that this year’s election was unlike any other because of the issues directly affecting millions of Americans and my own life.  I, like so many other people, knew that the future of our nation and the world was at stake.

At 5.00 a.m. last Tuesday morning I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and braced the morning chill as I marched to the local library.  When I arrived at the library’s entrance, adorned with a large American flag and those paper signs that read Vote Here and Vote Aqui, I was first in line!  I chuckled, thinking, this is history.  Not only will I be voting for the first time, I will be the first to cast a ballot in my ward and district.

For the next 50 minutes, as the line grew behind me, I reflected on all I’ve learned about the African American struggle for civil rights, particularly the right to vote.  Various snapshots panned across my mind: Black folks being hit with billy clubs, bitten by menacing German Shepherds, sprayed with fire houses during protests in southern cities like Birmingham, Alabama.  I blinked and saw a bloodied John Lewis, now a Georgia Congressman, then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), being attacked at a Montgomery bus station during a Freedom Ride and later nearly beaten to death at the Edmund Petitus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965.

I saw the faces of all my heroes: David Walker, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Rev. Richard Allen, Phyllis Wheatley, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Monroe Trotter, Ana Julia Cooper, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Stokley Carmicheal, Robert Williams, Angela Davis and others.

I saw the murdered faces too — Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner – all Freedom Summer workers whose bodies were found in a dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi after they had traveled there to register Blacks to vote. I saw the innocent faces of those four young girls, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair, murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. I saw Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Huey Newton, Medgar Evers, Bobby Kennedy, James Byrd, Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond and Sean Bell.

I saw flashes of Black people on their knees, praying outside courthouses, and lining up outside churches and sugar shacks to register to vote. And I heard the song, “We Shall Overcome.” I used to loathe that tired anthem, being a post-post Civil Rights era radical Black youngster coming of age during a period when I knew that race still mattered but felt that young people my age were apathetic and devoid of understanding or respect for this chapter of American history.

When the library door opened, promptly at six a.m., excitement surged through my chest as I displayed my voter registration card and driver’s license.  The poll workers scanned through three roll books, and could not find my name.

“What a way to start the day,” I mumbled nervously.

“Ma’am,” an elderly worker held up a sheet of paper and envelope.  “We can’t find your name so you’ll have to come to the back with me to fill out a provisional ballot.  Don’t worry, it will still count,” she assured me.  “You just have to follow me to the back.

I turned to the folks in line behind me and whispered, only half-jokingly, “If I don’t come back in ten minutes, call the cops.”

As I followed her, again, I thought about history – Black folks being required to count marbles in a container, recite the Constitution, take literacy tests or pay poll taxes.  And I remembered all the historical narratives I read of Blacks being intimated, beaten and even murdered at the polls.

When I finally cast my vote I felt quite emotional.  I felt empowered and knew that I couldn’t sit around for the next four or eight years complaining if the right candidate didn’t win. I felt nervous about the outcome, wondering if enough Americans would make the right decision this year. And I felt regret for not having participated in the past three elections from the time I turned eighteen. Though I believed then that I had no voice because of my race and age, I should have exercised greater respect for the struggle and sacrifices of those who came before me.  But in this historic election, I fulfilled the hopes and dreams of the slaves and all their descendants who came before me by exercising a right that had been denied to them.

I walked away from that tiny library tingling with emotion.  Unlike other polling places around the county, there were very few voters in line because I live in a community with large numbers of immigrants who may or may not be able to vote, or perhaps feel as if their voices and votes wouldn’t matter.  While I was proud to cast my very first vote, I also felt anxious about the prospects that lie ahead. I hoped that we wouldn’t hear of the same kinds of controversies we witnessed in the 2000 and 2004 elections. And I also had this sudden fear of my candidate being assassinated if he won. But like my ancestors and predecessors, I couldn’t let fear turn me around and keep me from casting a vote for hope and change.