Sounds like things are progressing well, Sue.
Watkins brought her a 105-year-old great aunt, Juanita Dent Hopkins, to the polling place with her a few days prior. "We were going to let her sit in the car but she said, 'I'm walking in.' She really is in good health and her mind is alert and she knew what was going on."
Think for a moment about what was going on in North Carolina in 1903 and you begin to get a sense of just how historic this moment is. Emancipation came in 1863. African-Americans were nominally granted the right to vote in 1870; women, in 1920. But Hopkins would not have had a genuinely guaranteed opportunity to cast a ballot until after the Voting Rights Act of 1965—when she was 62 years old.
"They let her go to the front of the line," Watkins said. "She said, 'This is a day in history that I hope to be able to see come to fruition, that we'll have a change, and that Obama will be our next president."
Watkins carries with her another generation's history. She was among five teenage girls who desegregated Wake Forest High School 40 years ago—one of only two to graduate. "One of my white friends called me yesterday. He was protective of me, he saw what we were going through. He said, 'Theresa, did you ever think we would see this happen?' And I thought, No. But it's here."