NSBE - November/December 2008 - (Page 11)

OBAMA wINS! ‘CHANGE HAS COME ’ T he line of voters snaked out the door of the polling place in suburban Maryland where Carl B. Mack went to vote on Nov. 4. But the executive director of the National Society of Black Engineers didn’t mind standing for hours with hundreds of others. He knew he was helping make history. “I had my five-year-old son with me. He helped push that button for Barack Obama,” says Mack, a former NAACP chapter president with a history of community activism. “I also was thinking about my mother,” he adds, with the emotion evident in his voice. “I still have her 1965 poll tax card…. She had to pay $2, which only gave her the chance to vote, then take a literacy test on the Constitution. All of that to vote for people who didn’t care about a black woman like her. But she knew the power of the ballot.” As the historic win of the first black www.nsbe.org U.S. president-elect begins to sink in around the world, the African-American community feels a special significance. Long before Obama’s signature campaign phrase, “Yes, we can,” African Americans battled slavery, segregation and modern-day discrimination, sustained by a dream they felt might never be realized: America choosing one of their own. the choIce oF youth Likewise, for the nation’s 18 to 29 cohort, which came out in record numbers to campaign and vote for Obama, the election was a watershed moment. At college campuses across the nation, students were jubilant. For instance, at historically black Morgan State University in Baltimore, Md., hundreds of students who’d been attending an election night watch party cheered then poured off campus and into the streets when Obama was CONTINuEd ON PAgE 12 projected the winner. • 2008 • 11 BY DONNA M. OWENS november/december http://www.nsbe.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NSBE - November/December 2008

NSBE - November/December 2008
Contents
How We Got Over
Obama Wins!
LaTanjia Robinson of Aerojet
Membership News: You Did It Again!
Cash In Your GPA!
NSBE-AE Signs On
Growing from One Love
New York Renaissance
Toronto Welcomes NSBE Convention Planners
Regional Officer Reconnects in Ghana
Texas A&M - College Station, NSBE's Distinguished Chpater of the Year
Lifetime Members: 118 and Counting!
NSBE Midshipmen
Vision and Change
The AE Niche
Thinking Green
Blacks in Computer Science: The Secrets of Their Success
NSBE Calendar
AE Programs Address Critical Goals
AE Members on the Move
Making Games for the Masses
Advertisers Index

NSBE - November/December 2008