The art of Kevin Blythe Sampson

THE ART OF
KEVIN BLYTHE SAMPSON

11/2/08

Not in my time

                               FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 15, 2003
Contact: Jim Lowney, 908-527-4103

Union County Freeholders Lewis Mingo (L), Chester Holmes (2nd L), Angel G. Estrada (2nd R) and Dan Sullivan (R) present Stephen Sampson with a resolution congratulating him on the recent opening of the “Stephen Sampson Senior Citizen Center” in Elizabeth.  (Photo by Jim Lowney/County of Union)

I am scared and excited about the election. I am having problems sleeping, and I actually took a one day rest from cnn . This morning I rolled over about 900 am, and the movie "close encounters of the third kind "was on.

I watched the tail end of the movie; it was my deceased wife’s favorite. Anyway when they played the song, dun dun dun dun dun.

I lost it; I started crying like an baby. And I realized it wasn’t so much the movie, as the election. I am an old Negro now and the thought of Obama becoming president,Does strange things to me. It inspires me, it give me a hope that I thought I had lost. It’s not so much about Obama as the concept  of Obama.

We just might be able to change as a nation. I believe that after such a long period of inaction and evil deeds, that  we just might have a chance.

Yes we can.

I hope I can make it through the next few days.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I had to physically vote on Tuesday, I would check myself into a hospital and ask to be medicated until after the election.

I am so protective of Obama, so hopeful. I have never lost my faith in God or in man.

But, I have from time to time lost my faith in America. Now for the first time in my life, I feel really American. Not as an outside observer trying to fight my way in. But truly a part of the dream and the process.

Cross your fingers and people pray

I am calling out to  deceased relatives for strength and a push.

Dad, Dad, I know you are watching.

My father would have started crying about two months ago. His pride and joy and his fierce protection and suppoort of Obama would have been legendary.

NOthing could have stopped this 85 year old man from registering voters like he had done for much of his adult life.

We would have had to do to him what I want done to me, tranquilize him.

But most of all I wish I could see his face again;

I wish  I could sit with my father election night.

Maybe I still can

because i do believe...........I belive

MY father always wanted to write a book about his life as a civil rights, leader community activist

He told me the story about being a kid and growing up in rural Georgia in the 1930’s or there about He spoke of going to the general store, with his sharecropper father, to buy supplies for the farm.

He spoke of the way that white people treated his father and that they treated him like he was less than human.

When he and his father left the store he turned to his father asked him why white people talk to black people like that, and when things would change..

His father turned to him and said maybe in your time son, but not in my time.

and thats what he wanted the title of his book to be

Not in my time

That stood out in my fathers mind until the day he died at 85 just three years ago.

This is what black folks bear in their souls; this is what I am talking about. This is one of the sources of our anger and our pride

yes we can

we shall overcome

we shall not be moved

On election night after Obama wins,

I want to look to the sky and speak to my father and say.

Its happened dad.

And it’s happened

in my time

in your time

in our time.

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