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Jill Porter: A momentous occasion

WALLACE AND Loretta Nicholson stood side-by-side in the voting line yesterday morning, smartly dressed and happily expectant. That's how they looked and felt on another significant occasion 58 years ago - the day they exchanged wedding vows.

Wallace and Loretta Nicholson likened their feelings about voting for Obama with the joy they felt at their wedding.
Wallace and Loretta Nicholson likened their feelings about voting for Obama with the joy they felt at their wedding.Read moreRACHEL PLAYE / Staff photographer

WALLACE AND Loretta Nicholson stood side-by-side in the voting line yesterday morning, smartly dressed and happily expectant.

That's how they looked and felt on another significant occasion 58 years ago - the day they exchanged wedding vows.

Yes, it was that momentous for them to vote for Barack Obama.

"It's like when I was getting married," Loretta grinned, standing in the basement of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Holmesburg.

"I was excited and I couldn't wait."

The Nicholsons were teenagers when they married, at a time when their rights were restricted and their status determined by the color of their skin. Now, a lifetime later, they went separately into the two voting booths, to pull the lever they hoped would mark the final passing of that shameful era.

The excitement was palpable in the church basement, with its linoleum floors, fluorescent lights and red-and-blue ceiling decorations, as the mostly African-American voters steadily streamed in.

"I feel like it's Christmas," said Democratic Committeeman Rodney Vinton, standing outside the 65th Ward polling place, shepherding the many voters inside.

"It means so much to me," Wallace Nicholson said of his chance to vote for Obama.

He was concerned, when he emerged from the booth, whether his vote had counted; the indicator light registered only next to the name of vice-presidential nominee Joseph Biden. He was reassured by the judge of elections that it had.

"Now I'm going to go back and get more people to come out and vote," he said.

The Nicholsons walked half a block back to Holmecrest Homes, a neat, freshly painted low-rise tucked into a quiet corner of Holmesburg.

Like Wallace, a retired building engineer, many who live in the PHA senior apartments have roots in the rural South and moved here during the Great Migration.

Jessie Lofton, 76, for instance, was "raised in the South on a plantation - I know a lot about life.

"There was no water. We had to carry water from the cow pasture to drink and take a bath."

Lofton walked four miles to attend school in a one-room "shack" heated by a coal stove, while whites had a tidy, heated, brick building. He had to quit school in seventh grade to go to work.

Sadie Harvey, 76, was born in South Carolina to a family that worked in tobacco fields and picked cotton. She also attended segregated schools.

"We thought about it, that it was wrong, but it was a way of life for us. So our parents used to tell us, we're as good as anybody else and don't think we're not and just be the best we can be. So we did."

Barbara Johnson, 74, grew up in North Philadelphia, and was the only African-American on the varsity basketball team at Kensington High School.

"It was hard," she said. "We had a lot of incidents."

Yesterday, Johnson was "overwhelmed" about being able to vote for Barack Obama.

"It's a lot to me," she said.

When the residents of the 84 Holmecrest apartments gather in the community room or the courtyard, they often talk about the hardships they face.

"Some of the people here can't hardly pay for their medicine," said Wallace, president of the residents association.

"We're constantly talking about the medical situation, health care, and the war in Iraq.

"If [Obama] can get us out gracefully, that would be a wonderful thing."

Several of them said they were voting for Obama, not because he's black, but because he's the best man for the job.

Still, yesterday was an epic day for them, for all of us, for a country that seems to have finally overcome a disgraceful past.

The elusive ideal of equality is finally realized in the election of Barack Obama.

No matter where the residents of Holmecrest Homes began in life, or what they experienced along the way, the journey to yesterday's voting booth was a trip they thought they'd never take.

"It's a proud day," Wallace Nicholson said.

"I've been waiting all my life for this."And last night, they waited a little longer, watching television all night, while the votes were counted.

"I'm feeling great!" Loretta Nicholson said as returns showed Barack Obama had won.

She and her husband of 58 years were exultant, as thrilled as they were - well, on their wedding day. *

E-mail porterj@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5850. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/porter