For DC 37 Retiree, A Dream Delivered

More than 45 years before Barack Obama was sworn in as President, Norman O. Davis was part of a District Council 37 delegation of more than 100 union members that went to Washington by train to hear Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

In the euphoria of that day, he was asked as he sat in his home in the South Bronx waiting for Mr. Obama's Inaugural Address, had he ever imagined he would see a black man take the oath of office as President?

Never, the 83-year-old Mr. Davis replied, explaining that in some parts of the country on that "magnificent day" day in August of 1963, "You couldn't even vote." He referred to two virulently racist Mississippi U.S. Senators, Theodore Bilbo and James Eastland— the latter of whom, prior to the discovery of the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers, declared their reported disappearance "a hoax"—who along with Congressman John Rankin "blocked every civil rights bill. They would have called [Mr. Obama] a mongrel," he said.

'The Sweet Victory of This Hour'

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow HISTORY HE THOUGHT HE'D NEVER SEE: Norman O. Davis, a retired District Council 37 activist who took part in the 1963 March on Washington, has a front-row seat as Barack Obama addresses the nation Jan. 20 after being sworn in as President. 'I love America,' Mr. Davis said. 'It still has some injustices, but if you work hard, there's a chance that someone will recognize it.'

On the TV set, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein was contrasting nonviolent struggles for equality like the civil rights movement with "a world where political strife is too often settled with violence." She declared, "No triumph tainted by brutality could ever match the sweet victory of this hour and what it means to those who marched and died to make it a reality."

"So true," Mr. Davis said.

His family had grown up just a few blocks from the rambling, three-story, 10-room home where he has lived since 1981 in the shadow of the Willis Ave. Bridge, a predominantly Latino neighborhood that during his boyhood was "all Irish and German. We were the supers. We lived in the basement and we had to fight all the time, being the only blacks in the neighborhood."

His parents split up when he was 6, and his mother took Norman to live on Second Ave. at 106th St. in East Harlem. Growing up there and later in Harlem, he didn't experience the kind of blatant discrimination or verbal abuse that blacks endured in the South, but there were more subtle forms he encountered as an adult.

Mr. Davis dropped out of high school at 16 and worked initially in a laundry in Chelsea before finding employment in the garment district. He aspired to be a cutter there, "but because of my suntan I couldn't get into the union," he said wryly.

In 1956, at his mother's urging—"She used to say, 'I'll stack my boy against anybody else' "—Mr. Davis, by then 30, enrolled at Washington Irving Evening High School while taking a job as an Attendant in the Parks Department. He became a shop steward in Local 924 of District Council 37, and after he was promoted out of the local, he was elected vice president of Park Officers Local 1508.

He was among the first members of DC 37 to get a bachelor of arts degree from the College of New Rochelle, and established a master's degree program in Public Administration at Long Island University for his fellow grads, even as he became a Professional Trainer with a special expertise in the tennis courts operated by the Parks Department. But, Mr. Davis said pointedly, "In the Training Division, they promoted four or five people and gave them bonuses, and I didn't get one. And I'm not bragging, but they couldn't have carried my briefcase."

The television cameras panned to show the throngs of people standing awaiting the new President—an estimated two million. "Look at them: miles," Mr. Davis said. "They came from all over."

Unity a Temporary Condition

His life convinced him that a sense of unity that transcended racial and ethnic differences was possible only under special circumstances. "When there's a catastrophe or an event of that magnitude, people come together from all over and they can laugh and talk," Mr. Davis said. "But as soon as things get peaceful, they separate."

Yet as Aretha Franklin sang, "My Country 'tis of Thee," he remarked, "There's no place like America. In 1964 I left for the first time and went to Trinidad—people were sleeping in the streets. I came back here and I kissed the ground."

Even knowing of all the discrimination that existed at the time? "If you work at it, it's there for you," Mr. Davis replied. "There were opportunities; in those countries, there weren't. I love America. It had its injustices; it still has some. But if you work hard, there's a chance that someone will recognize it."

Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to Mr. Obama, then said, "Congratulations, Mr. President," and Mr. Davis applauded.

"In five years he made this ascension," he said, wonderment in his voice. "From noplace."

Now Mr. Obama was saying, "Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet."

"He has a beautiful voice," Mr. Davis said.

'Time to Reaffirm Our Spirit'

Mr. Obama spoke of overcoming "a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable... We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."

Mr. Davis chuckled when the new President said, "Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions— who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to change."

When he said that "this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control— and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous," Mr. Davis said, "True."

He nodded his head when the President spoke of "the meaning of our liberty and our creed—why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."

"Magnificent speech," Mr. Davis said when it was over a couple of minutes later. It was a feeling he first had listening to Mr. Obama, then a State Senator from Illinois, give the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and he had Mr. Davis's support from the time he declared his intention to seek the presidency 2½ years later.

"Ethnically I had to be supportive of Obama," Mr. Davis said, alluding to the decades not so long ago when some states actively sought to disenfranchise black citizens. "They had the poll tax to keep us from voting."

Yet for all his belief in America and its possibilities, he had doubts that Mr. Obama could win "until the very end" of the Democratic primaries last spring.

'He Aroused the Youth'

Then, just as he had been able to transform his house from the point when he and his mother purchased it for $8,500 at auction from a place where "you could stand in the basement and see daylight above—we needed a roof, two ceilings and two floors"—Mr. Obama's election began to seem real, even inevitable, Mr. Davis said. "These people reached into all of America through the Internet. He reached out to the youth and he aroused the youth. To me, that was his army. The world is new to them, and he was exciting: he was like a rock star to them.

"McCain might have given him a very hard run except for the downturn in the economy," he continued. "But I knew Obama would win. The fact that he had come this far and he had this great pedestrian army working for him—he had the grass roots. This neighborhood was about 90 percent for him."

A Volunteer's Aura

Mr. Obama's background as a community organizer and the ability it gave him to reach other people was something Mr. Davis could identify with, citing his own service, from teaching body-building to teenagers in Harlem starting in 1960 to his activism in the DC 37 Retirees Association, where he served in ranking positions for nearly two decades until recently stepping down.

"People think I can help them, and I try," he said.

His marriage ended early, and his daughter died when she was 27, leaving a 10-year-old grandson who grew up with Mr. Davis and his mother and is now 43.

He spoke of his mother, who died at 91. And then Mr. Davis said, "I am just so proud to have lived to see this day. I'm thinking of FDR when he said, 'a day that will live in infamy.' This is a day that will live in eternity."