My grandparents were recruited from the Caribbean by US sponsored labor contractors as laborers to help build the Panama Canal.  They labored in obscurity as did over 4000 African-American soldiers who helped to build the Alaska-Canada (Al-Can) Highway during World War II.  I was born to parents who although born in Panama, lived under the shadow of a government that viewed them as interlopers, and demanded that the American government return "these people of color" back to their Caribbean homelands.

I grew up on the US administered Panama Canal Zone in the 1950s & 1960s where the best of  American styled jim crow ruled.  White Americans lived in "gold-rate communities," attended gold rated schools and enjoyed selected gold-rated jobs and other special amenities which were denied to Panamanians, and all others but white Americans.  Panamanians of West-Indian descent as well as all other Panamanians who lived and or worked on the US administered Canal Zone lived in "Silver-rate" towns and communities, attended silver-rate schools and could only apply for silver-rated jobs.

My literate sixth grade educated Dad sometimes spoke painfully of having to train barely literate white American men as his supervisors for jobs he could not apply for.  I remember going to the American administered commissary (grocery store) in the white community where he had to shop through a window in the rear of the building.  He/we were not permitted to enter through the front doors.  By now you should have ascertained that gold-rate and silver-rate were the local version of Jim Crow standards similar to "White" and "Colored" in the US administered Panama Canal Zone.  Most of which ended with the 1954 "Brown v Board of Education" Supreme Court decision declaring segregation unconstitutional.  Yes, its reach extended beyond the physical borders of the continental US.

Whenever I return to Panama, I make it a point to visit the building and the spot where the rear window in the former commissary was located at which my father suffered such humiliation to remind myself of how far we've come.

Having immigrated to the US, secured American citizenship, pursued and invested in the American dream in spite of my less than auspicious early contact with Americans in the Canal Zone, I have no regrets. 

America has been good to me and although it is not perfect, it is and remains a land of unbounded opportunity.  Witnessing and participating in the current US political environment, with the exhilaration this political season has brought, all I can say is "Who would have ever thunk it!!"

I am 63, Black, in America and never thought that I would live to see the day when an African-American would make such a credible run for the Presidency of these United States.  Sen. Obama's success is a reflection and investment of people across every socio-economic, reaial and cultural demographics of these United States.  "Who would have thunk it!!"  I never thought that I would live to see us rise above the limitations of our racial experiences and heritage to really begin to believe that the promise of the American dream is truly available to all.  There are still challenges to overcome.  Challenges evidenced by the contradiction of Sen. Obama being referred to as a Black man with a White mother but I have yet to hear him also described as a Whiteman with a Black Father.  You see, America has been a shining light on the hill to many who reside within and outside of its borders.  Here at home, the reality is closer and more stark.  Yet, I am more encouraged for my children, and my grand children that they may be inheriting a world more deserving of them, a world offering hope and opportunity.

Whether Sen. Barak Obama wins both the nomination and achieves the ultimate goal of the Presidency of these United Sates, and I pray he wins, we will have advanced the ball a quantum measure towards the goal of a just society where men and women of good will are judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin. 

I've come to realize that while we are called on to challenge the status quo and push the envelope, true gains are made and measured in incremental steps.