The windowless room was packed with people—rows of folding chairs filled with adults of all ages, some with children at their side, some in health profession scrubbies, in dresses, in jeans and athletic jackets. There were people lining the walls and standing in the aisles. I heard a voice near me say, ‘Take a number!’ I tore a paper tab from one of those dispensers you see at a bakery or post office.

But this was early voting last Monday around 4:20 PM at the Registrar's office in Lafayette.

I looked around, trying to get oriented, and searched for a space along the back wall. Paper Halloween bats dangled from the ceiling. There were over 100 people in the room. Something was happening here. ‘This is amazing!’ I whispered as I leaned against my spot of wall. The man next to me nodded. He was texting on his cell phone. After watching people for awhile, I did the same, sending news of what was going on in a message to my sons and friends.

An elderly man and woman, poll workers, were calling for five people at a time to go through a door to a hallway. ‘966 to 970,’ he said hoarsely. ‘966 to 970,’ she repeated more firmly, so those at the back of the room could hear. I was holding 087.

Though the workers' voices sounded exhausted, their faces were childlike and awake. Who could believe, all these people in the room here to vote, calm and no signs of resentment or impatience at having to wait. There was a hum of energy. There were coworkers who discovered and greeted each other, and friends who chatted briefly. I heard no talk of politics, not a whole lot of talk at all. There seemed to be no defensiveness, no ego trips in the room, no masks. I saw fearful dismay on the faces of one couple as they arrived, but that eased as they waited. Many people had this inward look, as though they had some secret they couldn’t quite yet fathom, but couldn’t hide either. The shared current was extraordinary. We were like a very large family waiting in a hospital for the birth of a baby.

The dispenser ran out of the paper numbers, but that didn’t slow anything down. You joined a line in the hall once your number was called. I was lead to a voting cubicle over an hour after I'd arrived. There were about ten stations going at full tilt. One poll worker, her nice suit rumpled, stated that more than 1400 people had already voted that day. There were over 200 people now waiting to vote, and still an hour to go, and it wasn’t yet Voting Day.

Lafayette isn’t all that big a city.

I returned to my car, floating. Something was happening here.

As I held my key to unlock the door, I saw that only half a block ahead was the old museum, the home of a governor in the 1800s, who, like many of European descent then, owned African slaves. The house has separate kitchen/slave quarters in the back. Many of the people of Lafayette, like me, share his genes, or the genes of some of the slaves, or both. Lots of people share his name.

Many of the voters at the registrar's office were connected to him and to the people who'd had no freedom to choose where or with whom they’d live, much less freedom to vote or run for any government office. While that changed long ago, the ethnic divide that is renegotiated day in and day out across America can still be rugged.

I walked toward the museum, a three-story white house. A late afternoon breeze stirred; I touched one of the plants in the front garden.

Two blocks away, descendents of this governor and those he had 'owned' stood peacefully pressed side by side. We all now had the opportunity to vote for a stellar candidate for president of the United States. He also happens to be the first American of African descent to run as a major-party candidate for the office.

How lucky to be alive for this election, to be here in Lafayette. We waited for early voting, light shining on the shadows of the past.