The Jefferson family of Cranston asked a passerby to take a picture on "this historic occasion," when the children were taken to the polls to see what voting was all about. Carl and Tamica Jefferson, upper left and right, posed with their children Niamiah, age 6, lower right, and Carl J. Jefferson, age 4, far left bottom, and Carl’s cousin Syriis (Jefferson), 4, of Pawtucket.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

CRANSTON — Carl and Tamica Jefferson stood in the warm sunshine just after they voted, , hugging their children as a stranger snapped a family photo of them.

“This is history,” Tamica said, her eyes filling with tears. “So many of our forebears who paved the way for us weren’t around to see this. We can’t let ourselves forget it.”

And so the family lingered under the blue sky outside the Arlington Manor polling place and soaked it all in –– the unexpectedly mild weather and the promise of what was to come.

It would be hours before Barack Obama would sweep to victory as the nation’s first black president, but already that possibility carried with it the dream of millions of African-Americans like the Jeffersons.

The couple brought their two young children and their camera to the bustling polling place off Cranston Street yesterday afternoon to witness an Election Day like no other.

They ushered Niamiah, 6, and C.J., 4, along with a cousin, Syriis, 4, into the booths and lifted them up to watch as they cast their votes.

When they finished, they let the children feed the ballots into the machine, their small eyes wide.

Tamica, 35, voted for Barack Obama.

Carl, 36, kept his vote to himself, as his grandmother long ago instructed him to.

Neither of the Jeffersons is old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but they felt deeply the significance of this election.

“We’re voting for those who didn’t have an opportunity to vote –– my grandparents, great-grandparents, mothers and fathers –– we’re standing on their shoulders today and doing what they didn’t have the opportunity to do,” Carl said.

The couple moved to Providence from Boston five years ago to work as pastors at the Life Change Christian Church in Providence. For them, yesterday’s vote was about the issues that affect the lives of their parishioners: the economy, the war and education.

But history, they said, will remember this day as a momentous step forward. As Obama himself said in his speech on race this spring, his campaign was about “[continuing] the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.”

After posing for the family photo, Niamiah announced to whomever was listening that she had voted for “President Obama.” Then she peeled off her coat and took off with her brother to roll around in the grass.

Their parents watched from the sidewalk, their eyes wet. “To think of their grandmother who lived through the ’60s and to know all that she couldn’t do and to see what is happening today…,” Carl said, his voice trailing off.

Hours later, when the sun had set and the polls had closed, the young family settled around a corner table at the Ground Round restaurant in Pawtucket to see if history really would be made.

Niamiah and C.J. ate pizza and colored with crayons while their parents stared at the television screen overhead.

Obama had long since taken Rhode Island and most of the rest of the Northeast, but the key battleground states were still in play.

As the minutes ticked by and the televised map grew increasingly blue, Carl shook his head. “I just never thought I’d see this day,” he said.

His wife nodded, wiping marinara sauce off C.J.’s chin. “As an African-American in this country, it hasn’t always been an easy road for us,” she said. Now that it appeared Obama would win, Carl noted, he’ll have a long haul ahead. Fixing the housing crisis and righting the economy will be a gargantuan task.

But those are challenges for the days to come.

Last night was all about triumph and the place it will hold in history.

When the television commentators called Ohio and half a dozen other states in Obama’s favor, Tamica clapped her hands over her mouth and blinked hard to stop herself from crying in front of her children.

“It’s really happening,” she said. “To think of something and hope for something and wish for it and then to see it happen, it’s amazing. Change is happening.”

cneedham@projo.com