Barack Obama clinched the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination last night. It has been a long, hard fought campaign with temperatures running high on both sides of the contest. I think it’s important, though, to not let questions of what Clinton is going to do and will the Party be unified in November to overshadow the moment. An African-American has just been nominated to run for arguable the highest office in the land by one of the two major parties. It is a remarkable moment, becasue there are people still alive today — people my father’s age — who suffered through Jim Crow and the denial of their most basic human rights, including voting. Rev. Wright, to take a high profile example , was a teenager when Emmett Till was brutalized and murdered. Colin Powell was almost thirty when the Voting Rights Act was passed. Maxine Waters was nineteen when the Little Rock Nine were escorted into Central High. I was twenty when the Rodney King cops were set free. My oldest son was five when the noose was hung on the property of a Jena, LA school district after black students had sat under the “white tree” and dismissed by the school authorities as a “prank”. Racism and its legacy is a still very much a part of the American life. That makes Obama’s achievement even more impressive.

This is not to say that racism is not still a major issue. Far form it. But this has been a hard fought, hard won milestone. It is truly a remarkable achievement and an unalloyed good. There is a lot more work to be done, that is true, but we should take a moment to stop and appreciate what has been achieved.