The pioneers

Before Barack Obama, there were Blenda Wilson, Maurice Ashley and Howard N. Lee. Wilson was the first black president of California State University, Northridge, Ashley the first black to attain the rank of grandmaster in chess, and Lee became the first black mayor in modern times of a predominantly white Southern town. On Obama's inauguration day, Lee, Wilson, Ashley and other pioneering blacks were asked to reflect on the challenges and lessons of being a "first." Here are their stories: Blenda Wilson, university president By the time she became the first black and first female president of California State University, Northridge, in 1992, Wilson had already blazed a path in academia. In 1988, she'd become the first woman to head a University of Michigan campus, at Dearborn. At CSUN, she earned praise for her leadership after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Now 67, she is retired and lives with her husband in Savannah, Ga.

"I remember at Michigan someone saying how wonderful it was that African-Americans and women could see me as a role model. And a colleague said [that] what's more important is for white young men and women to see an African-American in these positions and be successful. It changes the way that everyone looks at opportunity.

"But how can being 'first' be more important than being good?

"Being 'first' opens a conversation about our culture, our history, and in that sense it's not an annoying question. If it never got to accomplishment or vision, though, I suppose I would be annoyed by it. You saw so much in the Obama campaign -- the bedrock goodness of this country and our people. You assume there is going to be a second and a third and fifth and tenth, this is just the beginning.

"My father worked in a cleaning establishment, he was a presser -- blue-collar hard work. My mother did a variety of white-collar jobs -- elevator operator, she worked at Sears, she ended up being a supervisor in a juvenile facility. She was a very smart woman who didn't have the benefit of college. ...

"I was thinking about Barack Obama's grandmother having lived to vote for him. In those circumstances where I knew I was a pioneer or a trailblazer, what always seemed to be prominent in my mind was my ancestors who couldn't have dreamed that their granddaughter or great-granddaughter would be in that kind of position.

"If there is anything you carry with you, it's the sense that we stand on the shoulders of giants, but we made it to places that our ancestors could not have, and that's a very rewarding feeling."

"We learned at a very early age what it meant to be black in the South. We would often hear about boys or young men disappearing, and being discovered later killed, sometimes by hanging. My mother, who passed away a few years ago at the age of 96, taught us how to survive and when to fight. To this day, whenever I'm facing a difficult situation, or about to do something stupid, I hear her words in my mind.

"For example, over the years I've run into a park visitor here and there who needed my help, but once we were introduced, didn't want to be near me. Well, my mother used to say, 'Son, never let someone else make you happy or sad.' So, instead of saying, 'Hey, man, I'm human too. I'm not going to eat you, or snatch your purse,' I tend to have a lot of fun with that kind of nonsense.

"I recall an older lady in Yosemite Valley who was having some serious medical problems. I went out to take her and her daughter to the clinic. The only place for them to sit was in the front seat with me. These weren't small people ... and I could tell that little old lady didn't want to sit next to me. So I scooted over a little closer to her. At one point, I was driving with one hand on the steering wheel and the other arm draped around her shoulder, all the while asking questions for my report.

"Regardless, I have a job to do. ... When we're recruiting candidates for various positions, I'll ask, 'Are there any folks of color out there we should be looking at?' ... This is an area where the whole National Park Service is remiss. It has never done an adequate job of marketing when it comes to people of color. ... We're making progress, but my goodness sakes, it's frustratingly slow."

Howard N. Lee, Chapel Hill, N.C. mayor In 1969, Lee made international headlines when he defeated a white opponent and was elected mayor of Chapel Hill, a college town of 12,500 with a population that was 10 percent black at the time. Lee, who as a child was beaten by Klansmen, wasn't prepared for the attention his election generated. Now 74, he recalls that some black activists accused him of being an Uncle Tom.

"I thought that every right-thinking black person would see this as an opportunity to not have to continue to fight from outside the system, but gain some hope for coming inside the system. But there was this throwback to slavery days, and they were making the comparison between the house slaves and the field slaves, and I became the house slave. That was tough.

"The night of the election, there were [white] people in Chapel Hill who were absolutely devastated. I made a point, as Barack has done, to go to the people who didn't have confidence in me and reach out to them. That paid off for me by my final campaign, when I won with over 85 percent of the vote. Some [white residents] would not talk to me at all. They never came around and I had to write them off. But many people did. It's amazing. I play golf with a [white] fellow now who refused to vote for me back then, and we're very close friends."

Maurice Ashley, grandmaster of chess Ashley, 42, became in 1999 the first black grandmaster -- the highest international title in the chess world. Born in Jamaica, he was initially surprised by the racial divisions he encountered when his family moved to Brooklyn when he was 12.

"Initially, I had not thought about becoming the first black grandmaster in chess history. ... It wasn't until I got closer and closer to the title, as I got a bit older, that I really became a bit more preoccupied by the idea. Not really because of myself, but because of fellow black chess players who knew that I had a shot at doing it.

"They'd say, 'Moe, when are you going to do it, man? C'mon, you've got to do it for us.' Of course, I wanted to do it for myself, but having this extra pressure was just almost a little too much, you know? Because you're disappointing a whole race, it felt like, if you don't do it.

"I was here at home when Barack Obama became president, and it was one of those moments when you hold your breath until the last moment. You know as a chess player that the game is not over until it's absolutely over, so you try not to hope too much because you're getting ahead of yourself. The moment of the announcement was this tremendous relief and release, very similar to the moment when I became a grandmaster myself. It was finally done and now you can move forward, now you can move on."

Sylvia Rousseau, high school principal In 1993, Rousseau became the first black and first female principal of Santa Monica High School, where she reduced the drop-out rate, helped raise test scores and increased the college entrance rate for blacks and Hispanics. She is now a professor in the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education.

"I come from a family of firsts. At the University of Cincinnati, an uncle was the first African-American to graduate from the School of Pharmacy, and an aunt was the first African-American to head a local branch of the library. It's like that African proverb: We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors.

"I think Obama has an edge that many of us don't have. He has not inherited the slave experience. Those of us whose ancestors were part of the whole slave institution, we have built a resilience. But we also carry a baggage. It's as if he didn't get the memo: that I am inferior, as some people portray African-Americans.

"I was reared in a home where my father would say to us, 'You are one of the more fortunate ones.' ... I was always conscious that my being in a certain position is an opportunity to make it easier and to give access to those who don't have it. ... "I felt in many instances, even by well-meaning people, that I was being tested: Is she really as smart as she might appear to be? There was always a sense in which I felt I was having to prove something about myself."