12 months ago
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (WUSA)--When Barack Obama gave his victory speech on election night, he spoke of a 106-year-old woman he met on the campaign trail in Atlanta. Watching his speech was Rachel Tucker of Alexandria, Virginia. She will be 106 years old when Senator Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States.
"I just love that man," says Ms. Tucker.
On election night, Tucker was simply overwhelmed and filled with pride.
"He's going to be good. Yes he is. I just hope they are going to treat him all right. That he will be all right," sighs Tucker.
Ms. Tucker doesn't like to think much about her early years as a sharecropper's daughter in Lynchburg, Virginia. She begain working the fields at the age of six from sun up to sundown. If she was lucky, she would take home one-dollar a week.
At 13, Tucker left the fields to clean the plantation owner's house. School? Not for poor black children says Ms. Tucker.
"I didn't go like they are going now. They go and get graduated and everything. My mother and father wern't able to do that. They wern't able didn't have the money to send me like they should. You know back in those times."
Tucker lived in a time when neither women nor people of color were allowed to vote. When separate but equal meant finding a seat at the back of the bus.
"You don't argue and fuss with people. You go on back and do what they want you to do," says Tucker.
So on election night, when Barack Obama spoke of another woman, who suffered the same indignities, Ms. Tucker wept and celebrated.
"I slapped my hands and jumped up out off that chair and was just so happy didn't know what to do. So happy. Happy, happy, happy," says Tucker clutching her Obama-Biden campaign shirt tightly.
Ms. Tucker says no matter what, she will either be down on the National Mall or at home in front of her television watching Obama become the country's 44th president.
"No way I will miss that. No way. Love that man. Love that man."
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