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Barack Obama’s election last week was cause for celebration among local black community leaders.

“I was kind of wondering, at 71, that I would be alive to see it,” said Mary Kimbrough, president of the NAACP Bonner Springs Branch, about the election of the first African American to the nation’s highest office.

Kimbrough watched television-news election coverage at home with her children and grandchildren, and when the first announcements came that Obama had captured the 270 electoral-college votes needed to win, Kimbrough said, “we were just excited and overwhelmed.”

Kimbrough’s family took pictures of her in front of the televised election results, and the next day she bought issues of the New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal to save as historical documents.

Obama’s election is particularly important to Kimbrough as the mother of five grown children.

“We have always raised our children that here in America we always felt you could be whatever you wanted to be,” Kimbrough said. “We worked toward that goal, we tried to instill in them even that they could be president.”

Bonner Springs City Council member Jerry Jarrett had been so excited about the election, he was the first voter at Bonner Springs Baptist Church, showing up at 4:55 a.m. and helping to open the polling station there.

Contrary to Kimbrough’s previous doubts, Jarrett said he had always been certain he would someday see a black chief executive in the Oval Office.

“I thought we would come to that, we would eventually, because we have a lot of capable people,” Jarrett said. “It was just a great occasion.”

In addition to being happy for Obama’s victory, Jarrett said he was particularly pleased that Obama won with the numbers that he did.

“I’m glad he won … by a margin we didn’t have to deal with” voter-recount legal challenges by the GOP in states like Ohio and Florida, Jarrett said.

A former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, Jarrett recalled getting sent to Detroit to stop a July 1967 riot that was sparked by racial tensions, and contrasted Tuesday’s results with that era.

“It’s a great time for the nation,” Jarrett said. “I’m very excited for it, and I’m pleased that the outcome was what it was, and that our country is moving forward.”

Still, Jarrett is no Pollyanna on the question of whether racists’ hearts and minds will change as a result of Obama’s election.

“There are those that will, and those that won’t,” Jarrett said. “Some people are just set in their ways. Those others that are set in their ways, they’re just going to die like that — that’s unfortunate.”

Also, Jarrett said, Obama “is going to have to prove himself” capable of the job more than he would if he were a white man. “They’re going to be watching him.”

On a happier note, Jarrett said, “what I am really proud of is our younger generation. I’m just overwhelmed with joy at the way they are seeing things.”

Count civil rights veteran and community leader Louisa Fletcher among those unsurprised at Obama’s victory.

“I was quite pleased,” Fletcher said upon the television news networks’ announcement of Obama’s victory Tuesday night. “I kind of had the feeling it was his time. I’m happy for him.”

Fletcher said she thought Sen. John McCain gave a good concession speech.

“I liked that too,” she said. “I thought he did real nice. That’s the main thing: We should be getting together.”

Nathaniel Banks, the pastor of Olivet Church of God in Christ, 201 Springdale, was still overcome with emotion about the results three days after the election.

“It brought tears to the country’s eyes. It brought tears to my eyes,” Banks said. “I’m so happy even now.”

Banks watched the election coverage on television with his two daughters.

“I just sat down with my girls, because this was a historical moment,” Banks said. “I wanted them to remember so that they could pass it down to their kids.”

Banks’ daughter, Danae, a sixth-grader at Clark Middle School, had for a homework assignment a map of the United States to color the states red or blue as the results came in, Banks said.

“It kept her engaged in the process,” Banks said.

Banks said he was surprised by Obama’s victory, “because he wasn’t in that group of black leaders, the remnants of Martin Luther King’s era … I think that helped him in a sense. That was one of the reasons he was able to reach beyond being a black candidate, beyond race. People had put limitations on those leaders,” Banks said.

Banks said he was struck by a perception during Obama’s acceptance speech that night.

“One thing I did notice during his (acceptance) speech was the seriousness and heaviness of what he had just won, the burden and the heaviness of the country was upon him,” he said. “We definitely want to be praying for him.”

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