Barack Obama. The man who won the presidency in part through the refrain, “Change We Can Believe In,” that pulsated through a year-long campaign.

This Tuesday when Obama puts his hand on the Lincoln Bible to take the oath of office at the constitutionally mandated time of noon, he will become more than the leader of the free world.

He will become the ultimate, visible example of that change he professed he wanted to make: The first African-American in the top spot in this country. He will make history just because of the way he looks. The color of his skin will open him to a unique place in history, just as the skin color of generations before him closed their places in society.

Throughout the fierce campaign he waged, prominent blacks in this country often publicly expressed doubt on whether this particular change might actually happen.

That astonishment was felt not only across the nation. Here in Lawrence County older members of the black community would talk about not ever expecting to see this special inauguration in their lifetime.

Dr. Henry Fletcher, pastor emeritus of Mt. Olive Baptist Church, grew up in an Ironton that was far more liberal in its views toward African-Americans than the two other cities that make up the Tri-State.

One of the most obvious and unique was the integration of Ironton schools.

“I remember my grandmother saying she went to an integrated school,” Fletcher, 75, said.

“Ironton was more liberal. It seemed the Ohio River was the dividing line. If you lived south of the Ohio River, schools were segregated. Ashland schools just became integrated in the last 40 years or so.”

That put Ironton decades ahead of much of the country when the first significant ruling against segregated schools came in 1954 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. It was then that the highest court declared that racial segregation “violates the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal protection of the laws.”

That ruling overturned almost a century of Jim Crow laws that allowed segregation under the mantra of separate but equal, whereby segregation was not unconstitutional if the accommodations for blacks were equal to those available for whites.

It was a mandate more often observed in theory than in fact.

Blacks and whites may have gone to school together in Ironton, but segregation existed in other forms, in other places.

“At the swimming pool…. Blacks could only go on Monday,” Fletcher recalled. “Monday was Black Day. Whenever we had a celebration, it was on Monday. Black people turned out for a lot of things. Black people were pulled in from Ashland, Huntington, Gallipolis. A lot from Portsmouth came up on Mondays. It was a day of celebration.”

Those were celebrations that might continue into the evening. After the pool would close at sundown, often there would be dances and get-togethers at the old Dixie Garden at Eighth and Quincy streets.

“People would meet until 10 o’clock,” he said. “There would be buses coming in from Portsmouth, Huntington, sometimes they could come as far as Chillicothe.”

However, even in this community more liberal than its neighbors, many African-Americans in Ironton felt deeply a sense of disenfranchisement.

“Black people had an inclination that they wanted to be a part of society, but they didn’t know how to go about it,” Fletcher said. “When Dr. King came on the scene, it seemed he sparked a revolution within the black community. Some whites joined in, but not too many.”

That’s when Fletcher transformed himself into a local civil rights leader, heading up the city’s NAACP and organizing marches that could draw 150 to downtown Ironton. It was a job he relished and a job that meant danger.

“I had several threats, telephone threats, letters, real nasty letters,” he said. “At that time, it was common. You knew to expect those things as NAACP president. You didn’t know if you would be living today or tomorrow.”

But it wasn’t solely the marches of Dr. King that proved a catalyst for change for local African-Americans. For some that desire to be part of society manifested itself long before the 1960s.

Dr. Harold Lewis, a retired Marshall University professor, one-time teacher and principal at Burlington Elementary and later principal at Symmes Valley, graduated from Ironton High School in 1954. He remembers that segregated community pool and the maverick mailman who led the fight to open up it up to both races.

“The young black men came home from World War II. They had been to Europe …There was a lot less segregation in Europe. They had fought for their country and wouldn’t put up with that,” Lewis said.

However, there remained many in the white community who never questioned segregation and Lewis candidly admits at one time he was one of those who took separation of the races for granted.

“Being a young guy, it seemed that was the way it was. I didn’t notice,” he said. “We had a mailman. Sullivan. I believe his name was Fred Sullivan. In the very early 50s, he got a group of black people together and they came up to the pool on a day that wasn’t Monday and tried to pay, but couldn’t get in.”

It was an act reminiscent of the more famous refusal by Montgomery, Ala., maid Rosa Parks to move to the back of the bus. It led to a meeting between Sullivan and the city council, Lewis recalled. The city fathers tried to negotiate with Sullivan offering to change the pool schedule to three days for whites, three days for blacks and one day mixed.

“Which was ridiculous,” Lewis said.

The mailman’s refusal to capitulate forced council to open up the pool seven days a week to blacks and whites. It seemed a dramatic victory for civil rights, however, when the dust settled it proved to be a hollow one. All that actually came of it was that a large number of whites went elsewhere to swim, Lewis recalled. The status quo basically remained.

“There was no segregation officially. It was a de facto segregation,” Lewis said. “Socially, they were separate. There were black churches and white churches.”

At school blacks and whites would socialized to a point at dances and games, as long as there was no interaction between the races and the sexes. But when the evening ended, it was back to the same accepted division.

“Blacks went home. Whites went home. We didn’t see them anymore until when school started the next day,” Lewis said.

Yet Ironton never exhibited the harsh segregation associated with the Deep South where public bathrooms were labeled “men,” “women,” and “colored,” a reality a very young Lewis once found comically confusing.

One time when he was visiting an aunt in Florida, the young boy walked over to a water fountain while he was at a department store and started to take a drink.

“My aunt jerked me back and said ‘That is a colored fountain.’ She made me go over to the white fountain. I thought they were discriminating against me. Why wouldn’t they let me drink from that fountain,” Lewis recalled. “None of that was true in Ironton, Ohio. The prejudice was a little more subtle.”

As the nation prepares for an Obama presidency, Lewis and Fletcher see that election as significant and positive, but both agree it isn’t a sign that in this country racism is dead.

“We are moving upward … I wish my mother and dad were living, just enough to see what was going on,” Fletcher said. “In the black community and the black churches, we felt nothing like this was going to happen in the next 100 years.”

Likewise Lewis sees an African-American administration as a major step forward for the races.

“I think institutionalized racism is over. I don’t think we will ever have a point where racial discrimination will disappear,” Lewis said. “And it is both ways. As long as there are races in the world, people will use that for a use to degrade … the fact that you think you are better.

“Sometimes I feel ashamed of myself. I knew these things were going on, but that was the way it was. Sometimes I feel guilty. I just went along with the crowd.”