As the days tick down on the Obama presidency, and with his so-called farewell speech at McCormick Place imminent, I find myself going back in time to the years when most people didn’t know his name—and those who did weren’t sure how to pronounce it.
If you haven’t read the book, I’ll set it up for you. Obama wrote Dreams in 1994. At age 33, he had just married Michelle and was making his way as a lawyer, already vibrant with big ambitions to show the world his stuff.
Unlike Obama, Washington was very much of this city, having been born and raised on the south side. And almost everywhere young Obama went—houses, churches, union halls, Smitty’s—he saw Harold’s picture on the wall. The “election had given [the] people a new idea of themselves,” Obama writes. “Or maybe it was an old idea, born of a simpler time. Harold was something they still held in common: like my idea of organizing, he held out an offer of collective redemption.”
It seems to me Obama was just passing through, on his own personal sojourn, looking to get out almost as he got in. In 2000, he unsuccessfully ran against Bobby Rush for congress. In 2004, he got out for good, getting elected to the U.S. Senate.
In retrospect, young Obama sounds more jaded and less hopeful than he is today. “At the margins, Harold [made] city services more equitable,” he writes. “Black professionals now got a bigger share of city business. Harold’s presence consoled. . . . But beneath the radiance of Harold’s victory, nothing seemed to change.”
