The moment in the gym at Choptank Elementary School — a small brick building bound by the Chesapeake Bay and the Choptank River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore — was 200 years coming.

“I feel what she’s done has empowered all of us,” said Charles E.T. Ross, 57, who is the great-great-great-nephew of abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

Ross cast his ballot for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore in Cambridge, about 10 miles from his legendary relative’s birthplace. And he said it was powerful to be one of thousands who voted for Moore to become Maryland’s first Black governor on Tuesday.

The Associated Press projected Moore’s victory over Trump-endorsed Republican Dan Cox as polls closed at 8 p.m., to cheers at a crowded hotel ballroom where “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang played through the loudspeakers. His victory felt different from that of Virginia’s Doug Wilder, who in 1989 was the first African American to be elected governor since Reconstruction. Or Deval Patrick, who became the second in 2006.

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Moore reminds Pastor Louise Cornish a little of Barack Obama. As she cast her ballot for Moore, the 72-year-old admitted that the election of a Black man this time wasn’t as electric.

And that might be the ultimate victory — when we no longer have to celebrate achievement in the context of a “first.”

“It doesn’t matter what color he is,” said Tina Jones, 62, who is African American and voted for Moore. “I’m with the person who has heart. And he has heart, this man.”

Moore campaigned on a message of inclusion, promising to tackle child poverty, foster economic opportunity and “leave no one behind” — a slogan drawing from his Army years and aimed at fostering broad appeal in a state that has elected Republican governors in three of the past five elections.

Cox, a freshman state legislator, sought to harness conservative grievances. The far-right slice of Republicans who elevated him in the primary — over a moderate whom the popular term-limited governor, Larry Hogan, handpicked as a successor — could not carry him to victory.

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Taken in the context of Maryland, Moore’s election is significant.

The state was cradle to some of our nation’s most influential abolitionists while being the site of some of our nation’s most productive — and markedly cruel — tobacco plantations.

The wealth amassed by the plantation owners gave Maryland’s colonialists prominent standing in early American politics. The state now ranks as the nation’s wealthiest when in comes to median incomes.

It was the birthplace of Benjamin Banneker in 1731. Frederick Douglass in 1818. And Thurgood Marshall in 1908.

And, of course, Tubman, the “Moses” of her people, was born in Dorchester County sometime around 1822.

There are tributes to her tucked into corners and along streets throughout Cambridge, a jewel box of a town. Her birthplace marker is 10 miles south of that election polling place on land that is now part of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

A museum dedicated to her memory is in the center of town, not far from the tidewater areas where she learned to catch muskrats and crabs as a little girl.

“There’s so much about Harriet Tubman, the underground railroad, her work as a spy, in the suffrage movement,” said William Jarmon, 79, who oversees the all-volunteer Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center.

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The retired schoolteacher cast a ballot for Moore during early voting last week. He enjoyed the socializing he always does during election season, this year taking extra pleasure in his vote.

“My grandparents instilled that in us — don’t ever give up your right to vote,” he said.

That’s why Ariel Jenkins, 30, hopped in her car and drove to her polling station Tuesday around lunchtime.

“It’s important that we vote, even if you don’t feel like it,” the hairdresser said. “And that recognition, of Maryland history, of this governor, that’s important.”

The most important thing, Black voters told me, was that his values aligned with theirs, that he was someone whom they believed in and who spoke to them.

The son of a Jamaican immigrant who raised him as a single mother, Moore is an Army veteran, a former investment banker, a Johns Hopkins University football player and graduate, a Rhodes scholar and a White House fellow who once led the Robinhood Foundation, the country’s largest poverty-fighting nonprofit.

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It was a bonus for many that he happens to be Black.

“It’s powerful for us, that he’s someone who looks like me,” said Wyrita Myster, 55. “That gives us optimism. But what’s most important is that he protects democracy.”

Ross felt that voting for Moore was a step forward for Dorchester County and for Maryland. Though it’s the birthplace of abolition’s most towering heroes, their exceptionalism was forged in an inhumane crucible that is also the state’s legacy and part of its everyday struggles.

“Maryland has held on to a lot of prejudice, for years,” Ross said. “Some of it is still here, hidden well.”

He’s one of a handful of Tubman descendants who are still alive today. And he tries to be the vocal one.

A former art teacher who is now an educational specialist for the Dorchester County Public School District, Ross painted a mural of her in the middle of town. He volunteers at the museum when they ask, and he keeps telling her story when people will listen.

“She was a leader,” he said. “And she should empower all of us to be leaders.”

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