They are used to being patient at the Excelsior Club.
Generations of black Americans who made the old art deco bar their watering hole and a center of social agitation in once-segregated Charlotte have seen some of the changes they worked for. The breakthroughs were at times dramatic and swift — but mostly change crept over North Carolina’s largest city as the racial barriers to voting, jobs and power receded and the attitudes of their fellow Americans softened.
So the euphoria among the Excelsior’s clientele at the historic and, not so long ago, seemingly unimaginable election of a black US president 100 days ago is giving way to an acceptance that this is the long game.
Those who, like the club’s owner, James Ferguson II, have vested hopes in US President Barack Obama to transform lives in the surrounding neighborhood blighted by poverty, job insecurity and struggle, see his decisive early steps as reason to believe he will also dramatically improve those who have been left behind by conservatism.
“Already Obama’s having a tremendous impact,” Ferguson said, working his way through a plate of shrimps and fries. “He’s set a different tone domestically and internationally by making it very clear that, as powerful as we are as a country, you don’t try and go it alone. He’s trying to establish a tone of dialogue.”
“He’s been criticized by some because he’s indicated a willingness to talk to the North Koreans and the Iranians. To me, that’s a sign of strength — that you try to deal with your enemies on some terms other than just sheer firepower,” Ferguson added. “He’s given people a new sense of confidence in America. He’s given the right mix of hope and reality, and a genuine sense of care and compassion for ordinary people.”
That, however, is not a universal view in a state Obama took for the Democrats for the first time in 32 years, helped by the economic crisis.
The downturn rocked Charlotte, the second-largest banking center in the US, with nearly 3,000 financial sector jobs lost in February alone and unemployment rising sharply. But in a state that sent the racist and bigot Jesse Helms to the Senate for 30 years, Obama’s path to power was not straightforward.
He won only 35 percent of the white vote — but that was up 8 percent on John Kerry’s campaign four years earlier and, combined with a surge in the turnout by black voters, enough to deliver victory. Polls since then show that support for the president in the state is edging up, with more than half of voters saying he is doing a good job.
Ferguson, a lawyer who co-founded Charlotte’s first racially integrated law firm, says attitudes will continue to shift in favor of the president.
“There are a number of people around here, white mainly, who — because they couldn’t conceive of having a black president, couldn’t conceive of having black children running around on the White House lawn, and couldn’t conceive of having an African-American first lady who was strong, a first lady with charisma of her own — wanted him to fail and would have criticized him severely if he had not been able to handle things in the way that he did,” he said.
“But because he has acquitted himself in the manner that he has, people are beginning to come round. They are having to look beyond race. I was never 100 percent confident he could win enough of the white vote to win the election. That’s a testament to him but it’s also an indication that we are making progress and there are times when people can look beyond race,” Ferguson said.
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