Vice president Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has energized Lexington’s political community, particularly its Southeast Asian and Black residents. When Harris first entered the race this summer, we interviewed members of Lexington’s Indian community of about 3,500. Now, we speak to members of the small but diverse Black community of less than 600. Almost all the Black residents we spoke to said they never thought they’d see a Black president — especially not a Black woman president.
Melanie Thompson
“Kamala Harris has had two ceilings cracked for her by Obama and Clinton,” says Melanie Thompson, Clerk of the Lexington Town Planning Board. “I’d be devastated if she didn’t win.”
The day after the Harris-Walz debate watch party in Lexington, an optimistic Melanie Thompson was planning to drive to New Hampshire to canvas and knock on doors. Now an elected member of Lexington’s Town Planning Board, Thompson was, she says, late to politics. She was born in Cambridge, MA and moved to Lexington in third grade in the mid 1970s. Thompson graduated from LHS and then got her BA at Hampton University in Virginia.
“Here I was a young Black girl in Lexington and while I had many Black friends, it was a very white environment and I thought it would be a good experience for me to go to a historically Black college. I was glad I did.
She went to Hampton University, earned an MBA at Pace University, then worked in sales, advertising, and marketing in New York and LA before returning to Lexington to assist her aging parents.
“Although my parents were Kennedy Democrats, I didn’t get involved in politics until I came back here,” she says. Thompson volunteered for Deval Patrick, who became the first Black governor of Massachusetts in 2007. “Then Barack Obama ran for President, and I was hooked.”
“He is my everything, as is Michelle. I had been a strong Hillary Clinton supporter and the likelihood of a Black person becoming president wasn’t promising at that time. But after Obama won the Democratic nomination, I volunteered heavily, knocking on doors, phone-banking, texting and organizing volunteers to help as well. We trained at Obama’s local campaign office where they taught us exercises to help us practice telling our personal stories to help people relate to us. I didn’t think I had one, especially after hearing some stories that were so compelling. I ended up telling a story about my parents and how sad I felt that they weren’t alive to see a Black man run for President. During practice, several volunteers were in tears, which was amazing.”
“I was ecstatic when Obama won, and I even went to the inauguration in DC. At that point, I was in the local Lexington Democratic Committee but then I decided to run for the Massachusetts State Democratic Committee.”
Last month, Thompson attended the Democratic Convention in Chicago as a Massachusetts delegate and said it was like a rock concert for people who love politics.
“The speeches were excellent. The music was spectacular. Everyone was so happy!” Thompson heard speeches from Massachusetts representatives including Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Governor Maura Healey as well as Senators Cory Booker, Tim Kaine, Bernie Sanders and more. “Then to the United Center till all hours for the big Democratic party that people saw on National and Cable TV. Like Tim Walz said, you can sleep when you get home!”
“After that, and the debate, I have to believe Harris will win. The Republicans think they can win by practicing voter suppression, but the Democrats are focused on stopping that in a very big way. It’s time for a major country like ours to have a woman leader – it’s so beyond time. She needs to win this election. I would be devastated if she didn’t.”
Sean Osborne
“I’m not impressed by much but I love competence. It makes me happy that she has a strong and confident campaign that has embraced the current silos of American culture,” says civil engineer Sean Osborne.
“Long ago AM/FM was the big split. Now it’s: are you a white dude, come with me! Are you a Black dude? Come with me!”
Osborne traces his world view to his upbringing as an “army-dependent child.” His father was usually one of the few Black officers on the base, a battalion commander, then a brigade commander. He likes to quote late Senator Edward Brooke, a Republican and the first African American elected to the Senate, who represented Massachusetts from 1967 to 1979. “He said: ‘I’m looking for the best person irregardless of political party, of race or religion, or color of their skin.’ When I studied civics in school, I became interested in politics and was sure there’d be a Black president soon.”
Osborne’s family roots are in Texas, where his parents met at Prairie View A&M as undergraduates. He himself grew up in New Jersey, Texas, Germany, Georgia, Louisiana and finished high school in a gifted program in Fairfax, Virginia where his AP history teacher (who had played football at Yale) urged him to consider an Ivy league college. He was interested in engineering, journalism and politics. He watched the careers of New York City Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Texan Barbara Jordan, Kansan Elizabeth Dole, Mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young, Mayor of DC Marion Barry. After graduating from Princeton in 1991, Osborne worked as a civil engineer and arrived in Lexington via Hanscom, founding his own firm and maintaining an avid interest in politics.
When Senator Barack Obama gave a keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention, Osborne was not yet a fan. “I’m not a big speech guy. I don’t fall in love with politicians that way, but I fell head over heels with Obama,” he says. “But at work, I saw clients who had count-down clocks, just waiting for him to be a one-term president. And the evils that Black folks face in America are still there. A Black church was burned in western Mass after he was elected.”
Starting in 2014, Osborne joined the Lexington Human Rights Committee, trying to develop anti-bias and racial justice training for residents, students, LPS faculty and staff, town employees, and private businesses. In 2017, he co-founded the Association of Black Citizens of Lexington (ABCL) to connect the Black community, and created the Black History Project of Lexington, while keeping an eye on national politics.
“In 2016, I thought for sure that no matter how racist and sexist America continued to be, Hillary Clinton would win. I was wrong,” he says.
“I was surprised by how hard it was for Kamala to get traction in 2020. It wasn’t a good time to have the prosecutorial background. I was excited when I saw the groundswell of support this time, and surprised that the Democrats didn’t behave like cats that needed to be herded, but like adults and pragmatic politicians.”
For a good analysis of the race, Osborne recommends this editorial from St. Louis.
“That’s why I allow myself some hope. Prediction from Sean who’s often wrong: Kamala Harris will win.”
Jodi Finnegan
Will voters show up for Harris-Walz? That’s Jodi Finnegan’s question. “I always thought one day there would for sure be a Black woman president because my family was very political. My uncle ran with MLK; my father with Malcolm X.” Finnegan was six years old when Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm sought to be a candidate for president and remembers her family talking about it.
Born in Andover in 1966, the last of six children to parents who owned a small business, she was usually the only Black girl in her overwhelmingly white Andover public school classes. “My older sister, who is 20 years older than me, wasn’t allowed to go to her high school prom because the country club didn’t let Black people in,” she recalls. “I had to deck a teacher, but I had 30 witnesses who heard a woman teacher call me the N-word.”
Finnegan dropped out of high school and attended Grafton Job Corps – a boarding school for drop-outs – then Northeastern, where she trained in culinary arts and eventually opened her own restaurant in Haverhill.
Seven years ago, under state provisions for housing for the disabled, Finnegan found a two-bedroom rental in Lexington through the Section 8 housing lottery.
“Lexington reminds me of Andover, but better because it gave me a place to speak. There was community outreach. I became a Town Meeting member and I lent my voice to school issues, especially school disciplinary issues – my dad called it the school-to-jail-rail.”
She was not initially a Harris fan because of the Vice President’s stint as California Attorney General. “She was putting a lot of Black men in jail. But I would much rather trust her with my life than someone who tells me to my face that they don’t like me. I watched [Trump] being interviewed by the Association of Black Journalists and he can’t pretend for five minutes that he likes them? The reason Black people vote for him is that they think immigrants are taking our jobs away and they’re getting housing and help that homeless and veterans and addicts need. I say Trump is no good for us. He hates us. The 2025 manifesto scares the hell out of me.”
Finnegan thinks Tim Walz was a good choice for VP. “I like that he’s a schoolteacher and he brings up the little people,” she says.
“I actually do think they can win. If people can see Trump for who he is then they won’t vote him in. I worry about the kids who don’t believe in the voting system. They came out for Obama. Will they show up for Kamala?”
Larry Freeman
“I didn’t think we’d have a Black president in my lifetime,” says Larry Freeman, a project manager and Lexington’s first Black male and first openly gay School Committee member.
“Growing up in a small very racially divided town in the south, it’s ingrained that there’s a place for Black people and a place for white people.”
Freeman grew up about 30 minutes east of Raleigh, North Carolina in a very poor, religious, rural family. He attended UNC, got a job in a start-up and moved to Atlanta, Georgia as soon as he could.
“My family was very very religious. I went to Ebenezer Baptist Church every day. I knew I was different as a child – gay, I say now – but in a southern religious family you definitely don’t pursue that path. I was 27 years old when I came out.”
Atlanta was transformative for Freeman. He had never seen a city run by Black people and where, economically, Blacks were so affluent. He met and married his husband, then-nurse Charles James, and because Freeman was able to work remotely, the couple followed James’ career trajectory as he became an executive director of a succession of assisted living facilities in Minnesota and Florida. By the time James was recruited in Massachusetts, the couple had two children and looked for the best school district available.
Lexington was their first exposure to New England. “When we first arrived and went days without seeing a Black person it was a shock. Even within the Black community it was shocking how reserved people were. My daughter was a very social child, but one of only two Black kids from Lexington in her class. They kept trying to put her on a METCO bus. We’d walk into a local restaurant and the whole place would get quiet, or so it seemed to us. But now we feel completely at home here.”
He was drawn into local politics, largely because of the family’s welcome from Lexington’s Black and gay activist communities, whose members soon made him a Human Rights Committee member, Town Meeting Member, LexPride Board member and most recently, a member of the School Committee.
“I am praying that Georgia goes for Kamala,” he says. “Georgia is a unique state because Atlanta is such a unique place but, 15 minutes away, the political views are so completely different.”
“They’re going to have to reach the 21-30 year olds and get them out to vote. It’s like reprogramming them to understand that their vote counts. I have friends and family there and I’m pushing them to be active.”
Regie Gibson
“I absolutely did not expect to see a Black president in my lifetime,” says poet, musician, educator and literary performer Regie Gibson. “A Black woman? No. Not at all.”
Gibson was born in1967 in Mississippi, and grew up on the west side of Chicago where his parents were Daly Democrats: his father was a police officer and his mother ran a beauty shop.
“My father was Pentecostal but never went to church – he listened to Mahalia Jackson on Sundays. My mother was a Jehovah’s Witness – she believed that the more you trusted men, the less you trusted in God. She brought the religion to us boys. I knocked on doors until I was 16.”
As a teenager, Regie commuted by bus to Lane Tech, a college prep magnet school “three separate gang territories” from home, participated in “rap battles,” and wrote poetry “about raking leaves and cleaning chimneys – neither of which we had on the west side of Chicago.” He recalls going with a friend to a club called Spices with an open mike and jazz bar – “like nothing I’d ever experienced. The ideas. The eloquence. All Black people doing their thing.”
Poetry brought him to Cambridge, MA where he met and fell in love with a young white school teacher with several generations of family roots in Lexington. They have two children in Lexington’s public schools.
Despite Obama’s historic presidency and Harris’s historic role as vice president and presidential candidate, Gibson says race is still a complicated issue for voters and that old prejudices and allegiances still play a role.
“I do find it curious that the two black folks who made it are mixed race,” he says. “It’s almost like that’s what Americans can tolerate.”
“I’m not sure that Obama would have been elected had his wife been white, it might have put off both Blacks and whites. Michelle Obama came from an established Chicago Black family that connected him with his Blackness and legitimized him for Black people. I think Kamala’s mixedness allows her separation from the prejudices against Black women — that they are too fiery, too strong. Being part South Indian modulates her Blackness.”
Letha Prestbo
“I never thought a Black woman could become President,” says Letha Prestbo, a realtor and Town Meeting member. “The possibility of a President Kamala Harris seems unreal and I’m still having a hard time believing it can happen.”
Like Barack Obama, Prestbo is the biological child of a Black father and white mother, but she was adopted as a baby and, like Obama, was raised by a single white mom from Kansas. Her mom worked in politics — when Prestbo was little her mom worked for Republican Senator Bob Dole, but later became a Democrat.
Prestbo grew up in DC, where she went to Georgetown Day School, the first integrated school in the city. “I feel like I always knew about race and politics. I like to joke that it is possible I personally integrated the town of Alma, Kansas when my Mom brought me out to spend summers with my grandparents there,” she says.
Prestbo chose Bates for college, got into architectural marketing, and married a white architect in Boston. They had two daughters and moved to Lexington for the schools. “My husband is an architectural nerd so we looked at Moon Hill and Five Fields for a house that was developed by The Architects Collaborative (TAC) of Cambridge. One popped up in Five Fields and then I got to know my neighbors and discovered I was again living in a political community. They encouraged me to run for Town Meeting and also to become a realtor.”
Race became an issue almost immediately. At her daughters’ schools, they encountered the N-word and some other parents mistook Prestbo for a METCO mom. “It was scary starting out as a real estate broker. I’m sure there were times I lost out on clients because I’m not white. One client actually said I couldn’t understand her because I couldn’t understand anyone of her net worth.”
When Obama ran for president, because of her personal experiences, Prestbo didn’t think he could win. “It was exciting but impossible because he was Black. I felt this country would never elect him even though he was brilliant and capable. We have this romance in this country about politics being honorable and great and in fact politics is neither.”
“After Obama won in 2008, I just cried. I was overwhelmed,” she says. “Part of it was my mixed race kinship with Obama and Kansas and part was people telling you you don’t belong.”
“During the primaries of 2020, when Kamala was one of the contenders running against Biden, my mom said that people weren’t ready for another Obama. Beating Trump was her major focus and Kamala was not worth even a mention. This time around, it was wonderful to see her get into her groove.”
“I’m truly excited but cautious. I worry that some people would say they don’t want a Black woman for president. I want to make reservations to go to DC for the inauguration but I don’t want to jinx it.”
“I do think the young people are going to rise up. My kids get info from TikTok. A lot of it is pro-Kamala. One of my daughters is a crazy Swifty and Trump’s looking like the dumb old man to her friends.”
“Now, at the end of September, I am energized and hopeful that we are about to make history, but the work is not done — everyone must stay vigilant!”
Thank you, Helen! this was a great way to get better acquainted with these many Lexington residents. You could turn this into a weekly or monthly feature – it seems everyone in Lexington has an interesting story.