"Yesterday has come and gone leaving some of us to mourn. Times we had, friends we lost and why nature took its course. We have seen the many faces of slavery, the British Empire fall, we have seen Hitler's contribution to history and the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. We have seen famine and wars, as you well imagine, we have seen nothing as it was before.In time to come America will have a black President ..."

The above are the opening lyrics to a song from a Calypso-Soca CD released by the artist known as Crazy. I picked this CD up during the Democratic primary battles that determined who would be the Democratic nominee for the United States Presidency. Funny enough the CD was on the rack for quick sales and so it was reduced in price. It was in the vein of most Caribbean troubadours it included many other imaginings of things and events to come, including that in time Trinidad will develop a nuclear bomb. Team Africa will win the world football cup and there will be a gender world war just to name a few of its funny lyrical sounds.

But the song that drew me was the line In time to come America will have a black president. Needless to say I have been playing it ever since. Now we have seen it with our own eyes. America does have an elected black president, Barack Obama, the first African-American citizen to become president of the United States. I must confess, Constant Readers, that I am actually wriing these words on the Sunday before the November 4 election,

I had to go into the future, a future I was never sure I'd live to see, to observe this historic day in mind's eye in order to meet my deadline for the Mid-Ocean News Now conventional wisdom would hold that a columnist should never presume to be a prophet. How dare I write about something of this magnitude before it has even happened? Well, here's how. I could have gone in one of two directions I could have written one column that spoke to how I felt as a black man privileged to be alive to witness this great event, a watershed occurence which generations of African-Americans never believed would ever come to pass in the land where they had faced such grievous and brutal racial oppression, where the struggle to attain basic human and Civil Rights had been so long and odious.

Or I could have opted for the Worst Case Scenario I couldn't get out of my head. I knew I was taking a chance, a big gamble. two days before the election by writing that Barack Obama would become the next President of the United States. After all, despite what the polls were saying, that if he remained so far ahead in all of the opinion polls he could and would win, my ingrained scepticism and awareness of America's racial past kept me from fully believing that white America would willingly choose to elect a black man as the Pesident of the United States.

So I could have written from the perspective of a brave failed attempt on the part of Barack Obama to win the White House. But ultimately I refused to embrace anything other than a President Barack Obama come the morning of November.

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7I often play music when I write my columns and to help me go into the future to see a President Obama before it became a reality, I choose to play two movie sound tracks from the motion picture 'Amazing Grace'; a story of William Wilberforce who campaigned against slavery and 'Amistad', which told the story of the slave revolt on the ship of the same name.

But how did he do it? How did he make history against such great odds for they did throw everything they could against him. Perhaps a clue was hidden in the speech he made before the 200 Democratic National Convention in which he spoke of one America, not racially divided between black and white, not politically divided between blue and red states, but one America. Perhaps he spoke of the coming into being of an America that speaks to the world through hope, trust and friendship and not through that of military might, haughtiness and arrogance. There are of course other factors that has influenced this victory. First the issue of race Barack Obama is an African-American, but unlike other African-Americans who have run for the presidency, he did not carry the so-called black agenda on his sleeve so to speak. Had he done so, it was pretty clear he would not have engendered the measure of white political support that he did, not only to win the presidency, but to win the democratic primary battles against Hillary Clinton.

We heard much about the so-called ground game which essentially means reaching and motivating your political support. It will be studied for years to come the role that the Internet played in this, especially in the raising of funds to conduct the Obama campaign. Almost a billion dollars was raised. Not from the lobbyist working for corporate America, which held so much political influence over the government and even the president, but through the contributions of ordinary Americans with their $20 or $100. Obama did not take one dollar from the Federal government something that seemed to worry the McCain campaign, but one would be at a loss to explain since the ordinary American would seem to have reclaimed their pivotal role in American elections which includes the important funding of political campaigns.

The biggest factor in the Obama victory was of course the economic crisis which pretty much blew the McCain issue of who had the most experience in International Affairs off the table. His picking of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate under cut any talk about Barack Obama's supposed inexperience in international affairs. But what will a President Obama bring to the world stage?

Perhaps he sees a world built on kindness, a willingness to help your fellow man and not one built on greed and selfishness. He most certainly will go a long way in restoring America's standing in the world. Perhaps he is the modern Joseph taken after the biblical one whose brothers sold him into slavery only to witness in time to come that he became the ruler of the most powerful nation of the day. If this is so than indeed the advent of a present Barack Obama was divinely ordained.

P.s. A few minutes after 12 o'clock (a.m.) Bermuda time 11 American time, in the immediate aftermath of the declaration that Barack Obama would become America's 44th president, I put in a call to my American son-in-law to congratulate him on the election victory of his new president. Months ago he told me that president elect, Barack Obama would become America's next president. I did not believe him. Now I have seen it with my own eyes and having an African-American-Bermudian granddaughter and realising the struggle my daughter has had to get her to affirm her racial origin has made it easier for her to like other black children in America. She will see that America's first family looks like them.

But it will have great significance for white children also, in that they will grow up in American where race will assume less importance as their parents and grandparents have finally crossed the racial rubicon and elected a fellow African-American citizen as their president.

ALVIN WILLIAMS