A group of African-Americans ride a bus from Brooklyn, New York to Washington DC on Sunday, Jan.18,to attend the inauguration.

A New Yorker on his way to the inauguration.

On the eve of the inauguration of President Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States, and on Martin Luther Kings' Birthday, thousands of citizens arrive in Washington DC and visit national monuments and historic sites.

Peter Turnley
Photojournalist

On Sunday morning, I boarded a bus in Brooklyn with a group of approximately 40 citizens from New York, all African-American, each of whom, would not have missed for almost anything, the inauguration of President Barack Obama. I have been a photojournalist for the past 25 years, and have had the incredible opportunity to witness many of the worlds’ defining moments of modern history; the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989; the end of apartheid in South Africa and Nelson Mandela walking out of prison in 1991; and most of the worlds’ conflicts of the past three decades. When our bus pulled into Maryland, on the eve of the inauguration, I knew after hearing the words of my fellow passengers, in some sense fellow pilgrims, that I was in the midst of a moment of history like maybe no other in terms of its historic magnitude, that I had ever witnessed and certainly not in America.

It is the words of these passengers, and those of many others that I have met in the past two days, that are representative of some degree of what this moment means. I would prefer to let them speak for themselves.

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