That feeling that swept over us late Tuesday night and which has owned us ever since – that jubilation, that relief, that hopefulness, that awe, that pride – that was the fever breaking.

For nearly 400 years, the country writhed in racism and its foul produce - slavery, the Black Codes, lynching, night riders, Jim Crow, resistance and nullification, white flight, redlining, profiling, discrimination – and, a few times, suffered full blown seizures. For spells, it subsided, but it never vanished. The disease and the fever were always there. We were always in its grip.

The election of a black American as president of the United States, it seems, is the medicine we need. It could have come earlier – there have been others with the chops – but it could not have come at a righter time. We needed an intervention, a potent injection of change, an aggressive course to bring this raging sickness to heal.

And yet it couldn’t have happened without those earlier therapies. The marches, the prayers, the protests, the Freedom Riders, the sit-ins, the studies, the commissions, the Civil Rights entitlements, affirmative action, the constitutional amendments all primed us for this large and overdue dose of righteousness.

The fever broke on Tuesday. And, the next day, young black men, so accustomed to arming themselves with a look of menace or indifference in hopes of warding off trouble, let the corners of their mouths turn upward, for once, as they passed each other on the street. Old men and women had an extra pep in their steps. Parents began re-thinking the way they should steer their children. The jobless and the uninsured took heart in encouraging words. 

It is a hallelujah time, for sure. But, we are not cured.

Contrary to wishful thinking, Obama’s election is not tantamount to the eradication of racism. It is, after all, a stubborn cultural disease with a resistance to good law, good policy and good intention.

Tuesday’s magnificent results did not close the gap in employment, income, education and housing that yawns between whites and non-whites. It did not ease the sentencing and incarceration disparities. It did not fix the drug problem, the gangs and guns epidemic, the fatherless households, the inadequate housing.

The disease remains and, even on Tuesday night when people were rejoicing in the streets, someone somewhere was feeling its sting. There is much to do, much to repair, much to reverse, much to renew.

We are not out of the woods yet and relapse is always possible, but on Tuesday, we took a turn for the better. Get well soon.

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