Who can say for certain where the tears came from? There were the days picking cotton as a girl, her legs scratched and bleeding from the plants’ sharp spurs. There were the restaurants that wouldn’t take her order, the credit union that wouldn’t accept her application and, later, the swimming hole where her kids weren’t allowed to swim with the white children.
The barriers of segregation came down so gradually that Bertha Means never experienced an epiphany — one defining moment to celebrate freedom’s progress. But the African American great-grandmother and civil rights pioneer finally had that moment Thursday night a long way from her Texas home.
The 88-year-old delegate to the Democratic National Convention said she felt in her bones what Michelle Obama called “the current of history [meeting] this new tide of hope.” She found herself crying, uncharacteristically, first when she listened to the candidate’s wife’s speech Monday night. When Hillary Rodham Clinton moved to make Barack Obama the unanimous choice of the convention during the delegate roll call, tears again streamed down her face.