When the I got into the booth and the electronic screen lit up this afternoon and the candidates for United States Presidency came up on the screen -- I actually froze for a moment. A lot of thoughts flashed through my mind and most of them weren't pretty. I shook them off and came back to the moment as tears welled up in my eyes. I just wanted to stare a bit at the nominees and take it all in. Then the thought hit me that if I didn't hurry up something could go awry and I tapped the screen to cast my vote.

While doing so, I thought about the elderly black men and women in the room with me voting and wondered about their inability to vote in the past due to America's stained past (and in some cases present).

When I walked out, I could barely see clearly with my watery eyes to reach for the cheesy "I'm A Georgia Voter" sticker which meant so much for me today. I immediately called my mom who immediately recounted being a Clark Atlanta University student trying to vote with other students downtown in Atlanta and how they were accosted. But they did it anyway. She told me of the bus routes that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would devise for the students to ride in protest and would be spat on and cursed at. But they did it anyway. She told me of the times they would organize and sit in the Woolworths lunch counter downtown for service and would be ignored and blasted. But they did it anyway. Unfortunatley, that list goes on for that Atlanta native...

Which is why with any ounce of reverence of the past and the future, this black woman voting today under these politcal circumstances, was such a great day in America!