WHEN the roar rose up over Harlem Tues day night at the news of Barack Obama‘s monumental victory, I immediately thought of my mother – who didn’t live long enough to see this wonderful day.
I remembered the stories she told me of her life in the segregated South of rural West Virginia, where the same water flowed through two separate fountains.
No sign-carrying protester or speech-making crusader, she practiced her quiet activism by voting every election – and being tough on her two sons.
I wasn’t alone. Almost everyone I talked to had someone they wished were there to share the moment.
For many in Harlem, it was Terence Tolbert, Obama’s state director in Nevada, who died at age 44 of a heart attack two days before Election Day.
Tolbert, born and raised in Harlem, had given most of his life to local politics as a lobbyist for the city’s Education Department and as the chief of staff to Assemblyman Keith Wright, a Harlem Democrat.
Even as an Uptown crowd celebrated an Election Day that became a Day of Jubilee, Harlem paused to remember Tolbert and his political sacrifice.
Mixed with the euphoria over an election that belies the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow is a sadness for all the soldiers who died just short of the dream.
It was etched on the weeping face of Jesse Jackson – who, despite his earlier crude attacks on Obama, was visibly moved as he listened to Obama’s victory speech in Chicago.
Jackson had witnessed another great speech 40 years earlier, when his mentor, Martin Luther King Jr., told a crowd in Memphis of his own hope and shared his vision for the future.
“I just want to do God’s will,” King said.
“And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”
A day later, King was dead.
Obama had his own story of tribulation in the midst of triumph.
A day before his victory, he learned that his beloved grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, 86, had died of cancer.
“And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother’s watching, along with the family that made me who I am,” the president-elect said during his victory speech. “I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.”
Quickly, the sorrow passes. An old woman is dancing in the street. The ones we miss are happy, too. They’re in the Promised Land.
Leonard Greene is a Post reporter.
lgreene@nypost.com