by Shira Kleinman
Student at Muhelenberg College, Allentown, PA
1:30 am Tuesday morning I crawled out of bed and walked towards the performing arts center with five friends. We all huddled together for warmth while waiting for our buses to arrive. At about 2 am 250 students from Muhlenberg College loaded up 5 buses bound for Washington DC with the intention of witnessing history. I have spent many a rally on the Washington Mall, but never witnessed something like this. That Tuesday, the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, was the largest political gathering in history, and I was a part of it.

At 5 am we unloaded the bus and began our walk in the cold towards the Mall. Even the four layers of clothing I was wearing could not keep out the bitter early morning cold, that appeared to last all day. All the streets were closed off and just as the sun was beginning to rise, thousands upon thousands of people walked through the streets of Washington DC all to say that they witnessed the inauguration of the first African American president. As I approached the mall and tried to push through the crowd I thought about what a momentous event I was about to witness. I remember doing a report of the civil rights movement in 5th grade and calling my grandpa who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. He relayed the story of thousands of people cramped together all just to hear this man speak and to be inspired by his hope for a more united and equal future. Now as a 19 year old I understood for the first time what he was talking about. On the 41st anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's death more than 2 million people from all across America joined together to watch his dream come to fruition.

We stood in the cold for 6 hours meeting people from all across America who came to celebrate this event for different reasons. A couple from New Orleans came to support the man they thought could change their future. We met a family from Houston Texas who took off work and school to drive together and witness this momentous inauguration in person. Before long our bodies were numb from the cold, but we did not care as the ceremony was about to begin. As President Obama took his oath of office the crowd roared with excitement. A man who brought his young daughters and his mother was filming the event. As he panned the camera to his aging mother to see her reaction I truly understood the magnitude of this event. The old woman was not jumping or shouting or clapping, she was standing bundled in her jacket crying. It was at that moment that I understood that all the work of the 50 years before this moment had not been in vain. That woman who saw a time when she could not vote was now standing at the inauguration of the first African American president. I was so proud to be there not only to carry on the values that my grandpa had but to be part of such an integral moment in our country's history.

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