Even Barack Obama doesn’t understand the significance of being elected president, according to a baby boomer I sat with on election night. I don’t understand either, she said.

But I have a responsibility to tell the story.

Maria Noel, 52, couldn’t stop crying while sitting at the bar at the Midtown Music Hall.

“You don’t understand. They spat on us,” she said.

She talked about how Amy Williams, my white co-worker who came to the music hall with me, and I would have been viewed as protesters if we had tried walking into a nightclub together in the 1960s. She said there were plenty of clubs I couldn’t enter because of the color of my skin.

A 71 year-old mother who lives in the inner-city told similar stories. She asked me not to use her name because she lives alone and didn’t want to attract any trouble.

These were her comments:

“Our young people don’t realize what’s happening,” she said. “They need to pull their pants up and get their lives together. They’ve got a chance.”

She said her generation had to ride the back of the bus. If whites needed those seats, they had to stand.

And now a black man is the president of the United States.

“This is the bottom coming to the top,” she said.

I spoke with the Rev. Amos Baker, the founder of People Wanting A Change, a grass-roots organization founded in 1993 in Chattanooga to give more recognition to those who felt their voices were not heard by local government.It’s been more than 10 years since former City Councilman John Taylor presented him with a certificate of appreciation for the work he had done in the community as an advocate for children and volunteer district commissioner of the Cherokee Area Council, Boy Scouts of America.

His picture still hangs on the wall at Carver Recreation Center for the efforts he made toward fundraising and getting the center’s swimming pool reopened, he said. He hasn’t been as active since his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis, but even that setback didn’t keep him from calling to have his voice heard.

“Barack Obama made history,” Rev. Baker said. “He made it to the White House. Now we can know that if you have the education, you can go any where you want to go.”

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