Praise song for the day.

January 20th, 2009, it was a cold, crisp day in Washington DC, inauguration day for America's

first and only black president.

Are you prepared to take the oath, Senator?

I am.

I, Barack Hussein Obama.

I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear.

For this historic occasion, Barack Obama had asked for a special poem.

We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Praise song for the day was a celebration and a shout out.

Say it plain that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the

bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices.

They would then keep clean and work inside of.

And it also held hope for the future.

Praise song for walking forward in that light.

That poet was Elizabeth Alexander.

She is also an author, a scholar, a teacher, and now the president of the Andrew W. Mellon

Foundation which makes hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to the arts and humanities.

Recently, Dr. Alexander published an intense and beautiful essay in the New Yorker magazine

called The Traveller Generation.

About her own sons and all the other young black Americans who have grown up known the

...