Creating history
By Henrietta J. Burroughs
East Palo Alto Today
For East Palo Alto resident Elizabeth Jackson the trip to Washington, D.C. to attend President Barack Obama’s inauguration was a journey of a lifetime. Jackson decided before her trip that she would create and bring home her own souvenir to remember the historic occasion.
In deciding what to take for the trip, she packed a large piece of white cloth that she had purchased several days earlier. The cloth was the size of a queen sized bed sheet. On the cloth, she intended to get just a few comments about Obama and his inauguration from those she met along the way.
On Wednesday, January 14, Jackson left East Palo Alto and headed for Oakland, CA where she boarded a train for the three-day trip to Washington, D.C. The train’s only other stop would be in Chicago. Hours later, on January 17, the train Jackson was on arrived at Union Station in the Nation’s Capital.
Once in Washington, Jackson commuted each day by Greyhound bus to Virginia where she was staying. Given the millions of others staying in Washington for the inaugural festivities, she could not find an available room in the city. On one of her commutes, Jackson met an ABC TV reporter, who was interviewing travelers at the bus station. She told him about the cloth she had and the signatures that she was collecting.
She had even collected signatures from her bus mates, one of whom came from Minnesota (Jackson’s television interview on ABC can be seen at the East Palo Alto Today website. To see the interview, go to www.epatoday.org. and scroll down the “Headline News” column on the right side of the page to the story titled East Palo Alto Resident Interviewed on National Television News Show - Witnessing History.).
During her four days in Washington, Jackson took her cloth to every inaugural event she could attend. It went with her to the Lincoln Memorial Concert, to the Community Service event, to the Vice Presidential Ball and, even to the inauguration, itself.
She said whenever and wherever she laid the cloth out, “people lined up to sign it.” Even she was surprised by the response her cloth received.
From the time she started her trip to the time she left Washington, four days after her arrival there, Jackson collected more than 400 signatures and comments from those she met along the way.
Jackson’s Expression Cloth holds the signatures and comments from people who came not just from America and such states as Georgia, New York, Minnesota, and Virginia, but her cloth contains the comments from international travelers from such countries as Kenya, Canada, Japan and France.
When one views Jackson’s Expression Cloth, one can see various types of handwriting in different colors and in different sizes, randomly placed all over the cloth’s entire surface.
Jackson said, “The comments on the cloth came from signers of all ages, starting as young as nine years old, and people of all races.” The Expression Cloth even has statements from elected officials like the mayor of Redondo Beach, CA.
It is hard to look at Jackson’s Expression Cloth and not be impressed by what one sees. She plans to enhance it and when it is complete, she plans to make it into a quilt.
While Jackson started out to get a simple souvenir of the inaugural ceremony to bring back to her home in East Palo Alto, what she obtained may well become a piece of history itself.