Obama Jam

Many residents of the Greater Fulton community were unable to acquire inauguration tickets or unwilling to battle the traffic to reach Washington DC on January 21, Inauguration Day. But that didn’t prevent them from celebrating the swearing in of our first African American president.
The Obama Jam took place in the Neighborhood Resource Center on Jan 21, the evening of the inauguration. It featured a live band, great food and silent auction of Obama memorabilia. President Barak Obama’s acceptance speech was also rebroadcast during the latter half of the ‘jam’.
The evening was especially poignant for Veronica Northcroft. Years ago she had been traveling through Richmond by train and stopped at the Main Street train station. She went to a food vendor to get something to eat and was refused service.
“It was the first time anyone had treated me that way simply because I was a black woman,” says Mrs. Northcroft. She could think of no other place to be other than Richmond on such a history day. For Mrs. Northcroft and for the other at the Obama Jam, it felt like a new page it history was being wrote.
Contributor: Brandon Jaycox