A Vote in Honor of My Father

Today is Election Day. It’s also my late father’s 85th birthday. This past May marked 10 years since his passing — 10 years since I’ve heard his voice or felt the warmth of his skin. Even though the pain of losing him feels like it was just yesterday, I often find myself amazed at how much has happened in ten years — not just in my personal life, but in our world. 

The last president my father voted for was President Obama. I still remember the pride that swelled within him whenever he spoke about Obama and the promise of hope his election brought. As a Black man who was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the height of the Jim Crow South, he often recalled his personal struggle with fighting for his right to vote. He would tell stories of standing in line at the polls for hours just to be turned away for ridiculous, racist requests to stop him from exercising his newly granted right. I could listen to him speak for hours about his experiences—he was so proud to be from the South and to have played a role in a movement that reshaped American history. He never imagined he’d live to see the day he could vote for the first Black president of the United States. It was his wildest dream — proof that the statement about us being our ancestors’ wildest dreams is true. 

He was the first person I called when Obama’s win was confirmed. As a freshman at Howard University—his grad school alma mater—I could barely hear him over the roar of applause, cheers, and tears in the campus ballroom where we’d been watching the results. When the announcement came, the entire room erupted in celebration. We carried our uproar from campus to the White House. We were on a high for weeks. We couldn’t believe that we got to witness the election of the first Black president from the Mecca of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. My father couldn’t have been prouder. To him, casting his vote was the pinnacle of everything he had fought for in the ’50s and ’60s—all he had endured as a Black man in the South to reach that day. And he couldn’t have been prouder that this historic moment also marked his daughter’s first presidential election, where she cast her absentee ballot from Howard University, a place instrumental in his Civil Rights Movement journey.

“You know, I was there that day,” he would tell me. 

“I was at the March on Washington. I saw Dr. King speak. It was one of the most powerful moments in my life,” he continued. “I was at Howard University and we all walked down to the Mall to be a part of history.” 

He never imagined that he would witness the election of the first Black president with his daughter just 45 years after that iconic march where Dr. King dared to have a dream about the promise of America. 

Two years after my father passed away America went back on its promise. Let me correct that — American returned to who she’d always been. America decided that white supremacy was far more important than the progress we had made. White America was angry and the post-Obama whitelash elected Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. I remember the gut punch I felt when his election was confirmed. I remember the fear. I was carrying my first daughter in my womb. The fear I held for the world I was bringing her into was daunting — such a stark difference in just eight years. I longed to go back to that moment on Howard’s campus as tears filled my eyes while I gripped my belly. How could our nation have fallen to this point, especially after the place of vibrant hope we had reached just eight years earlier? 

I wanted to call my dad. I needed him to tell me what to do — where to place my anger. I needed him to wrap me in his comforting presence and remind me that this setback would be nothing more than a setup for our next major moment of progress, the next one even bigger than the last. But, he wasn’t here anymore. He was gone. And I wept. I felt so alone. 

I often wonder what words my father would have had for Trump. My father was not one to curtail his thoughts — he told you like it is and left nothing out. But, he was an intellectual, so he expressed his opinion in a way that made you feel like you were listening to a college professor over a cup of coffee. (He was a college professor, so go figure.) His words were always thoughtful, never laced with malice or anger. He was gentle but firm, kind and respectful, yet resolute. No matter the topic or your perspective, he had a way of making you feel safe. Even so, I wish I could’ve heard what he’d have to say about our nation’s biggest bully. And I wish he’d been here to offer comfort and guidance on that fateful day in 2016.

I grieve for the loss of conversations we would have shared for the past eight years of Trumpism. The hours we would have spent on the phone dissecting behavior, sharing our frustrations, crafting solutions, and trying to hold on to hope. I grieve for the fact that he missed the shift in my career focus to writing, speaking, and teaching about white supremacy and liberation — work inspired by his mission to live a life that fought for equity and justice, always. And, today, I grieve that he is not here to witness this history — the election of the first Black and South Asian Vice and soon-to-be president of the United States. He would have been filled with even more pride seeing Kamala Harris rise. He would have said, 'See, I knew we’d come back stronger. We just had to keep fighting.”

Today, I’m casting my vote for Kamala Harris, in honor of my father. When she wins, I’ll take my daughters—his granddaughters—to her inauguration. I’ll tell them about how, 61 years ago, their grandfather stood on this very ground, fighting for the freedom we’re still working to bring to life. This vote is part of that legacy, but we know the fight doesn’t end at the ballot box. Even after centuries of struggle, we’re just beginning. And we’ll keep pushing forward, carrying the vision he and so many others held, believing in a future they never saw.