'Love and cooperation know no skin color'

Carl Jenkins put on a freshly ironed shirt and a nice tie Tuesday morning and headed to the Golden Thyme Coffee Shop on Selby Avenue in the heart of St. Paul's old Rondo neighborhood.

Recently laid off from his job at Ecolab, Jenkins still felt he had ample reason to dress up.

"It was like a Sunday morning going to church because you just knew it was going to be a good sermon," Jenkins, 54, said after cramming into the coffee shop's community room to watch Barack Obama's inauguration on a big-screen TV.

"Now I feel like I'm leaving church, coming out all full of spirit, optimism, brotherhood and love," he said. "I'm so overwhelmed with this new sunrise that I can forget the storm that preceded it."

From the St. Paul coffee shop, where 80 people squeezed in to witness history, to the full house at the Riverview Theater in south Minneapolis, a wave of optimism swept through the Twin Cities spots where people gathered to watch Obama take the oath.

Fourteen-year-old B.J. Allen recalled the day in October when he was volunteering at Obama's phone bank in St. Paul. A woman on the phone stunned him by saying she wouldn't vote for a black person.

"I just said, 'Oh, thank you,'" Allen, an eighth-grader at Concordia Creative Learning Academy in St. Paul, recalled as he watched at the Riverview as Obama was sworn in. "I feel great that I helped him. We helped him win."

The 700-seat Riverview was filled to capacity, and owner Loren Williams estimated that about as many others were turned away, some of them running down sidewalks glancing at wristwatches as the 11 a.m. swearing-in approached.

The mood was celebratory: The audience clapped thunderously for the Obamas and booed at outgoing President Bush, at one point breaking into song, "Hey, hey, hey, goodbye," when the TV camera cut to footage of large cardboard boxes being loaded into moving vans.

They held cell-phone cameras aloft when Obama spoke and snapped pictures as if they were standing on the National Mall themselves. They hollered and waved goodbye when Bush climbed aboard a helicopter to leave.

To secure their seats, some skipped school or raced over from work. Many planned to continue the celebration throughout the day with repeat viewings of the ceremony or a night out with friends.

"People are realizing that love and cooperation know no skin color," said Highland Park resident Juan Parker, who grew up in north Minneapolis and recalled the riots that erupted there after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. "I didn't think this would happen in my lifetime."

By the time most guests had trickled out of the theater, Allen and his friend Jerry Butler were already wondering what more they might witness in their lifetimes.

'We're all here in this kettle together'

Back at the coffee shop, after Obama took his oath, a rowdy chorus of "Yes we did! Yes we did!" burst out. Obama's "Yes we can" campaign motto now has a new tense.

Sherry Holloway, 52, of Burnsville soaked in the scene on the big-screen TV, taking Obama's message to heart.

"My hope and desire is for everyone, for all of us, to unite together and make a difference in everyone's life," she said. "Let's not just let it be lip service, but actually do it. We're all here in this kettle together and we're going to lift each other up."

James Patterson, 46, came to the coffee shop from his house nearby not just because Obama won.

"Humanity has prevailed," he said. "The content of character is now the objective and it's about being human, not about race or any of those things."

At Cristo Rey Jesuit High School off Lake Street in Minneapolis, all 145 students filled the auditorium. Fifteen-year-old Bryant Shelby manned the computer, which fed CNN to a big screen.

"Obama has that kind of serious face, but he knows when to break out a smile," Shelby said. "He was speaking to all, children and adults, and saying how things are going to be different around here.

"I'll tell my children and grandchildren I saw one of the most historic things ever."

Over at the Hope Community Inc. nonprofit in Minneapolis, about 30 Somalis watched on a borrowed TV, cheering when Obama's middle name -- Hussein -- was announced.

"I felt as if I saw Martin Luther King's dream come true today," said Luz Zagal, a Hope Community staffer with three kids. "Now I can definitely say my kids could be the next president of the United States because I see it happening."

chao.xiong@startribune.com • 612-673-4391 curt.brown@startribune.com • 612-673-4767