By Lee A. Daniels

Sometimes, amid the many spectacular and glittering examples of the advances black Americans have forged during the last half-century …

And sometimes, amid the many alarming challenges black Americans confront at every level of American society …

It’s easy to lose sight of just how far blacks have come and the fundamental qualities that got us from there to here.

I was reminded of this recently when I read in the Washington Post the obituary of Eugene Allen.

Among the guests of honor at President Obama’s Inauguration, Eugene Allen undoubtedly knew the interior of the White House better than all but a few living Americans. He had worked on the White House household staff for 34 years – through the presidencies of Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, before retiring as White House maitre d’, the top butler’s position, two-thirds of the way through the administration of Ronald Reagan.

Allen had been interviewed in November 2008 just days after the Presidential election for a profile in the Washington Post that recounted the momentous changes he had witnessed in the country since 1952, the year he began working at the White House.

Referring to President Obama’s election, Eugene Allen said then: “I never would have believed it. In the 1940s and 1950s there were so many things in America you just couldn’t do. You couldn’t even dream that you could dream of a moment like this.”

For me, the determination of black Americans to be able to dream freely and believe that one’s dream could come true has always been the fundamental inspiration of the black freedom struggle.

Lee A. Daniels is Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline.