Waters in a mighty stream.

What are the key guides to the future? It would not be over-optimistic to eliminate one of the vain hopes of the segregationists–the white back lash. It had a certain reality in 1964, but far less than the segregationists needed. For the most part it was powered by petulance rather than principle. Therefore, when the American people saw before them a clear choice between a future of progress with racial justice or stagnation with ancient privilege, they voted in landslide proportions for justice. President Johnson made a creative contribution by declining to mute this issue in the campaign.

The election of President Johnson, whatever else it might have been, was also an alliance of Negro and white for common interests. Perceptive Negro leadership understands that each of the major accomplishments in 1964 was the product of Negro militancy on a level that could mobilize and maintain white support. Negroes acting alone and in a hostile posture toward all whites will do nothing more than demonstrate that their conditions of life are unendurable, and that they are unbearably angry. But this has already been widely dramatized. On the other hand, whites who insist upon exclusively determining the time schedule of change will also fail, however wise and generous they feel themselves to be. A genuine Negro-white unity is the tactical foundation upon which past and future progress depends.

-Martin Luther King, March 15, 1965

For obvious reasons I am not the one to put into words what so many African-Americans must be feeling today watching the rise of Barack Obama. So, courtesy of a very good friend who one could say was an early Obama adopter, please take the time to peruse the extraordinary photos taken during the Obama campaign by Scout Tufankjian.

In particular, look at the faces, black and white.