America is VINDICATED

For the first half of 20th century, the cultural life here was centred in an inner-city area known as the U Street corridor or the ‘Black Broadway' - home or host to several African American legends like jazz greats Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, radical revolutionary Thurgood Marshall, poet Langston Hughes, and medical researcher Dr Charles Drew. The riots that broke out after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr began here

Nishi Malhotra/Hardnews/ Washington DC

From Times Square in New York to the tiny village of Kegola in Kenya, from open house parties in Prague in Europe to Lafayette Park outside the White House in Washington DC, they danced on the streets. Joy illuminated the faces of the world's young and tears streamed from the eyes of aging African Americans who never thought they'd live to see this day. 

Two of the most enduring images from the night of November 4 at Grant Park in Chicago, where Barack Obama spoke as the new President Elect of the United States, were the silent, moist eyes of Rev Jesse Jackson, first black man to ever run for US president, and the brimming lashes of Oprah Winfrey, much-loved African American entertainer. They stood right there among the crowds, shoulder to shoulder with other ordinary black folk ­- America's underclass looking proudly on at their man taking centerstage.

Washington DC, hushed on the eve of the election, almost holding its breath - still unsure whether to expect more breezy wind or a full-blown storm - erupted in spontaneous street celebrations outside the White House and in the historic U Street corridor of the city. Students watching election returns at George Washington University on Pennsylvania Avenue surged in a wave towards No 1700, the home of the president. "Out Bush, this is Obama's house," they shouted, even as cars honked on the roads and people in apartment buildings opened their windows and screamed. CNN news anchors, who had been joking on air that the low-lying Bush must be in a witness protection programme, confirmed that he was indeed in the White House, possibly listening to the euphoria surrounding his now imminent departure.

In quite another part of the city, far from the tony white neighbourhood of Georgetown where the Kennedys and Kissingers earlier lived and where sitting members of the Senate and House still own elegant town homes, is a neighbourhood that truly signifies what Obama is truly about. DC is the only minority-majority city in the US - that is, more than half or about 55 per cent of its population is African American. For the first half of the 20th century, the social and cultural life of this community was centred in an inner-city area known as the U Street corridor or the ‘Black Broadway' - home or host to several African American legends like jazz greats Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, radical revolutionary Thurgood Marshall, poet Langston Hughes, and medical researcher Dr Charles Drew. The riots that broke out in the district after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr began here. From 1968 to the early 1990s, this part of the town lay derelict - shuttered shopfronts, unkempt homes, drug dealers and criminals afoot on the streets.

But the past decade, jump in real estate prices in the city and a newly extended metro had pushed prosperity into the area. As prices skyrocketed in Georgetown and the hip 1980s Latino hangout of Adams Morgan, U Street began to slowly gentrify. Today, the neighbourhood is home to young African American professionals and aging white liberals, as well as evening-hosts to the new party crowd of Washington DC.