The bright, crisp morning of Election Day for me was all about promises -- promises made, promises kept, promises yet to come.

I gathered my two youngest sons, Evan, 4, and Aidan, 2, bundled them up, and brought them to the polls with me, carried by a promise I made to myself: that voting would be a family affair this year.

When we got there, I whispered into their young ears how much this special moment meant to Daddy. And how much this Election Day would mean to them when they got older.

As I held my little ones, I could recall a promise that my mother made to me long ago on a hot summer day in St. Louis in 1963, as I watched violent civil rights demonstrations in Alabama on television.

My parents, both educators, had kept me fairly sheltered from the cares of the world and the troubles that afflicted black Americans, no matter where we lived. The only thing I knew was hope. And promise.

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I was bewildered by what I saw on television during that hot summer. Twelve years old, what did I know, living in St. Louis, of demonstrations, hoses and dogs turned on innocent people?

I had to ask. "What is going on down there, Mama? What is this all about?"

My mother, her belly swollen with the pending arrival of my baby sister Lauren, put down her iron, beads of sweat pouring down her face, curls of steam swirling around her glasses. She looked me dead in the eye for the longest time.

She didn't have to say anything. Knowing my mother's fiery, independent spirit, I could see that she was making a silent promise to herself: No child of hers was going to grow up ignorant of what was happening to our people.

My mother and father sent me to Tuskegee, Ala., that summer with my Grandma Estella, who happened to have a trip planned to the veterans hospital there to visit a relative.

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As I boarded the train, my shaky hand held tightly by the gloved hand of my grandma, I wondered what was in store.

At a certain point, in the dead of night, we were awakened. We had to get up and change seats, moving to the rear as we crossed into the South.

When we peered out of the foggy, damp windows as we pulled into Montgomery in the dark, I was looking for the dogs.

We got on a Greyhound bus for Tuskegee and, once again, I had to sit in the back with my grandma, a proper southern lady from Russellville, Ark., with a little hat on her head, her forehead shielded by a wispy net.

She fixed my gaze and said with a stern look as I stepped off the bus, "Child, if you step out of line here, I'm going to whip your rusty behind. So you be good, you hear me?"

I remember one young white couple leering at me, with hate in their eyes. As I moved along, more angry, terrifying glances from white faces were turned in my direction.

The bus station was divided into two sections, one marked "colored," the other "whites only." There were two water fountains outside, one for blacks, the other for whites.

Inside the part of the station meant for me and my grandma, dirty, dusty ceiling fans dropped grease on our food, which had bugs in it. The bathrooms were filthy and had no doors on the stalls.

"Enough, " I thought, "I'm going to the other side."

While my grandmother was distracted, I ran to the clean, air-conditioned "white" side of the station. Inside of a minute, a man bellowed, "Boy, what are you doing here?" and he ran me out, fists waving.

The home where we stayed in Tuskegee was my first exposure to bone-crushing poverty. It was little better than a shanty, with barefoot, ragged children running all over the place. I wasn't allowed to play in nearby fields; the kids warned me that either the snakes or an angry white person would kill me.

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Two years ago, when I gave a sermon in Ohio during Black History Month as part of my seminary training, I tried to talk of what I saw in Alabama, but I could not stop crying.

Stepping down after the sermon, I remembered what I learned that summer in Alabama. I thought of my mother, now dead, and her silent promise.

All this came back to me this week, as I stood, cuddling my restless, wiggly boys, and cast my ballot for the first African American to become president.

My 4-year-old, Evan, was proud.

"B'rack Obama, Daddy," he said with a big smile. He doesn't know many things yet, but he knows Mr. Obama. He was glued to the set anytime the senator appeared on television.

"How far we've come," I thought.

In this miracle we call America, my own life is a testament to promises made, and kept.

I studied and worked hard. I have a good job. I worked in Congress for a well-known senator as the Reagan revolution began, one of only a handful of black Senate staffers at the time.

None of the blessings I've enjoyed would have been possible had it not been for those whose blood was spilled in Alabama in that summer of 1963.

Now, as a gay African American, a proud father and, I hope, a minister some day, I stand second to none when it comes to having pride in my country and what it has achieved. Mr. Obama's election reminded me of that.

The promise that now lives in me has been passed on to my children -- my beautiful "rainbow" sons -- two of them African American, one Puerto Rican and one Irish.