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PB WOMAN MADE OBAMA INAUGURATION A FAMILY AFFAIR

By Jonesetta Lassiter/SPECIAL TO THE COMMERCIAL
Monday, February 9, 2009 10:28 AM CST

For Lula Brown Gray, the importance of black history is more than this one month on the calendar.

Lula Gray recently discusses her trip to Washington D.C. to witness the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Pine Bluff Commercial/Ralph Fitzgerald

It’s a way of life.

Her late parents, Lula and Silas Brown, were civil rights activists here in the 1960s. Her mother participated in sit-ins at local lunch counters, and her father drove students to the sit-ins, she said.

“They instilled in us to stand up for your rights, to speak out, to work for the political candidate that you think will do the best job, and always, always, to vote,” she said.

Gray, a retired school teacher, volunteers in local elections. She worked the primary, general election, mayoral runoff and special election on a proposed sales tax increase. She is also wife of the Rev. H.O. Gray, a long-time member of the Jefferson County Quorum Court.

So, it was a no-brainer for Gray to consider attending the inauguration after Barack Obama won the presidential election in November to become the nation’s 44th president and first African-American to win the office. She and as many of her family members as she could persuade were in Washington for the historic occasion.

“I did it to honor my parents and to share this very important piece of history with my grandchildren,” she said. “I wanted my grandchildren to remember this significant time in history, to know why it’s important and to remember that their grandmother took them to the inauguration of the first African-American president. We made it a family affair. My parents had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren there.”

Eighteen family members from six states — Arkansas, Mississippi, Michigan, Missouri, Texas and Washington state — journeyed to the nation’s capital. Several of them accompanied Gray on an 18-hour bus trip from Little Rock for the four-day odyssey.

“I really, really appreciated it,” said Cozetta McMillian, her 19-year old granddaughter who is a student at Tuskegee University. “I was sick, coming down with a cold, but when we got to Washington, I was just so happy to be there. It was good to see what it meant to my grandmother.”

McMillian, the daughter of Cynthia and Larry McMillian of Jackson, Miss., added that “young people my age sometimes use a lot of excuses, such as ‘the system is against me,’ but with Barack Obama as the president, we don’t have that excuse anymore.”

But for McMillian, the most exciting thing was getting through the gate to the mall. “I knew then I was going to see him.” Of Obama’s speech, she said that his talk about responsibility really resonated with her. “It made me realize that I have to be responsible for myself, for my actions and to my community, in a sense. It all starts with you, you know?”

Not quite all the family went, though. Gray could not convince her husband to make the trip.

“I just didn’t want to be out in all that cold and all that crowd,” the Rev. H.O. Gray said. “So, I stayed home and watched it on TV. I actually saw my wife on CNN.”

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