www.roanoke.com

From her seat at the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, Maxine Joiner Wright looked at the 2 million-plus people gathered in Washington and choked up.

“Just think about it: Each one of them represents a family out there. This is how far we’ve come.”

“Hold it together,” Jackie Williams said, comforting her. They were among 20 black Roanokers gathered in front of a wide-screen television in what was once a segregated school for blacks.

As the ceremony began, boxes of tissues were passed between rows.

Celebrants nodded and hugged each other and provided  call-and- response commentary to the speakers, enthusing "thank you, Lord" and "let it grow" and "yes, we can."

When Obama ended his first speech as president, 84-year-old Bob Hale put his hands in the air and shouted: “Our president! Yes!”

Like nearly everyone else in the room, Sarina Paynter wept. “I remember what it is to get on the bus and have to fight.” She recalled her nephew playing basketball on an integrated team — but never getting the ball passed to him because he was black.

As a college student at Virginia State University, Paynter had to study with hand-me-down textbooks from the University of Virginia. “I know the struggles. I remember daddy telling me to get an education ‘cause can’t nobody take what you put in your head.’

“We’ve come so far,” Paynter added. “Now we have to pray so hard.”

For the first time in his 80-plus years, Bob Hale said he sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” — and really meant it. “Finally, we are really more American than we are African now,” Hale said.

“I won’t forget the struggles we went through to get here, but right now I feel more American than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

— Beth Macy