The Story Of Barack Obama Becoming President | Barack Obama: Finding Hope | Documentary Central

We still doubt that America is a place where all things are possible. We still question the power of our democracy. Tonight is your answer. I had just gotten out of college at Columbia University in New York. This was in the midst of the Reagan era and most of my classmates were thinking about making money. I was very much interested in seeing what could be done in terms of the inner city. My father's death, which happened about halfway through college, woke me up a little bit. Getting serious about my place in the world, what kind of positive impact I could have on it. Since black folks are suffering even more than the general population. The question for young Barack, what could he do about it? I decided to become a community organizer. There wasn't much detail to the idea. I didn't know anyone making a living that way. He sends out dozens of resumes for organizing jobs, but with no luck. When almost two years later, Barack gets a call for an organizing position in Chicago. He's interviewed by activist Jerry Kelman. My main concern was why he might want to do this work. And so I spent the time listening to his story. Well, I heard that he had lived his life as an outsider and maybe conceived himself that way. He had been African-American or at least part African-American in a place, Hawaii. There were very few people who were black and when you have that experience, either you try to be like everybody else or you identify with other outsiders. Barack's case, I felt he identified with other outsiders and that was a good start for working with people who were poor and facing racial discrimination. Chicago was considered by many the capital of black America and America's most segregated city. During the early 1900s, the great migration from the South swelled Chicago's African-American population. By the 1960s, Chicago had become a mecca for black nationalism and pride. There's no such thing as freedom in this country for our blackness. In 1983, Chicago had its first black mayor. When Barack Obama came to Chicago, he came to a city which had very recently elected an African-American mayor. The election of Harold Washington had been national news, front page news. Everybody had covered the racial conflict that had divided a city. Harold thought of himself as an African-American politician who extended himself to other communities for Latinos for the first time on a really impressive scale for Asian-Americans. So there was an inclusiveness in Harold's administration that hadn't been the case before in the city of Chicago. So it was an African-American mayor who not only represented the ideas of African-American empowerment, but more importantly, the kind of idealism which must have been attractive to a young Obama. Chicago was the most exciting thing going on at the time. I loved Harold Washington. I mean, he was such a larger-than-life figure. But Harold Washington was faced with many challenges. The 1970s were devastating for Chicago economically. You had not only the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in heavy industries, the steel mills and the railroads and meatpacking, but you had white flight on a massive scale. Tens of thousands of whites simply abandoned the city of Chicago for the suburbs. And with unemployment, all problems go up. Violent crime and gangs and drugs. People began to spend more time inside. The boarded up homes, the decaying storefronts, kids from unknown families who swaggered down the streets. All of it whispered painful truths. Obama moved into a small apartment in Hyde Park on Chicago's South Side. As Obama met the residents, he found that many were single mothers. They were spirited, good-humored women. Women who, without husbands to help, somehow managed to raise sons and daughters, juggle an assortment of part-time jobs and small business schemes, and organize Girl Scout troops, fashion shows, and summer camps for the parade of children that wandered through the church every day. We were at St. Helena's of the Cross Church in a conference room, and Jerry Kellman brought in Barack. The first impression was basically, he is really young. He was, what, 23, 24 years old. It was an unusual thing for someone his age to be that concerned about other people. We had a Tuesday organizers' meeting, and we would talk about the different issues that we were working on. He began to listen for commonality. What was it that tied people together? They often disagreed. They maybe even disliked one another, but his job was to mold them into a group that could begin to speak with a common voice on their own behalf. He helped us identify the problems, help us turn those problems into issues which were then doable, solvable. He invited me to come work with him at Developing Communities Project, and we did site visits to some of the parks. And while we were looking at a playground that had some glass and a sandlot and that sort of stuff, all of a sudden we heard these gunshots go off, and we sort of ducked down because they sounded pretty close. Johnny dropped flat onto a small plot of grass, and I quickly followed suit, and watched a young man appear from around the corner. A few seconds later, two more boys came around the same corner. One of them was waving a small pistol. Without stopping to aim, he let out three quick shots in the direction of the first boy. Then, realizing that his target was out of range, he slowed to a walk, and the two of them laughed to each other before continuing down the street. Children again. We looked at each other, and it was like the realization to hear you at a playground where children play and hear gunshots are going off. It just was one of those things, wow, you know, this just isn't right. That just underscored the need for change. And I guess, in part, I identify with these young men, and suddenly, you know, I get sort of an epiphany and see that nobody's tending to them. One of the main issues was public safety, gangs. Our church was frequently vandalized. We had a lot of graffiti on the walls. You know, people would break in. They would take the PA systems. Of course, there was unemployment in the neighborhood, and then dealing with drug abuse. To confront these other serious problems, it was necessary that Obama engage the help of ministers from the black churches. Barack was very young, and a lot of the ministers were much older and had been established in the community for many, many years. At his first meeting with the group, Obama was stating his goals when he was interrupted by one of the ministers. Listen, what's your name again? Obama? The last thing we need is to join up with a bunch of white money and Catholic churches and Jewish organizers to solve our problems. They're not interested in us. Shoot, the archdiocese in this city is run by stone-cold racists. White folks coming in here think that they know what's best for us, hiring a bunch of high-talking, college-educated brothers like yourself who don't know no better, and all they want to do is take over. Right now, you're on the wrong side of the battle. Now, when that meeting began to deteriorate, and it really did, Barack, he let the guy that basically was the Judas in the group, he let him leave, and then Barack, he said, let's not go out of here yet. Let's spend 10 minutes rehashing what just went wrong to make sure that the next time we meet, we don't make the same mistakes. From that moment, we began talking about what went well, who was good at doing what, and so we started a process of always evaluating what we had done in that meeting before that meeting closed, and when we planned the next meeting, of course, it went much better. The other guy was not invited. Jerry Kelman had been schooled in the hardball tactics of Saul Alinsky, considered the first community organizer. Alinsky was very tough, confrontational, very nuts and bolts, and very much appealing to people's self-interest, wages, had a decent working conditions. Alinsky's principles would be a strong influence on young Obama. Alinsky defined power as the ability to act in concert with others, not in isolation as an individual. He laid out a roadmap of exactly how do we find these common themes that draw people together and give them the strength to overcome all the injustices and inequalities that they're struggling against. And there's only one answer. Power. From O'Hara Washington, the black independent mayor, the apparatus of most things were still in the hands of what we fondly called the democratic machine of Chicago. The predominantly white democratic machine controlled Chicago politics for decades. Patronage and graft were common. Because of this, improvements in some areas of the city were ignored. Case in point, the 2,000 unit Altgeld Gardens. Altgeld Gardens is part of the massive public housing world that existed in Chicago in the 1980s and 90s. And these are very tough neighborhoods that at one point were characterized by upwardly mobile middle class families, but had become by the 80s and 90s basically areas that were facing downward mobility. By the time Barack arrived at Altgeld Gardens, it was obvious the name was a misnomer. Everything about the garden seemed in a perpetual state of disrepair. Ceilings crumbled, pipes burst, maintenance crews stopped even pretending that repairs would happen anytime soon. So that most children in Altgeld grew up without ever having seen a garden. It seemed only natural to use the land as a dump. A dump and a place to house poor blacks. There were a number of issues at Altgeld, but the community found a rallying cry. I saw this white machine sitting out there and as like a closer pebble started to hit me in the face and I said, oh wow, what is this? And two guys stepped out from the basement and we called them the astronauts. I knocked on one of the guys mask, you know, and I asked him, I said, what are you doing? And he told me, he says, we're removing asbestos. I said, removing asbestos? And he says, only on the first floor, only on the first floor. And I said, oh, I said, no tenants live on the first floor. They were removing asbestos for employees who were only there for eight hours. But here are tenants who live there 24 hours a day. They weren't going to do any removal for them. Obama's role was to engineer a plan of attack for the residents. So Barack chartered a bus, a little yellow school bus. We went to the Chicago Housing Authority. They told us the director would be with us shortly, you know. Although they had a scheduled appointment, they were left waiting in a hallway for hours. I looked at Barack and I said, they're playing with us, you know, he's not going to meet with us. And I said, I've looked over there in his offices and I don't even believe he's here, you know. Obama was getting his first taste of Chicago bureaucracy. Barack might have been irritated, but he never showed anger. But I noticed that if he smoked one cigarette and then he began to smoke another one, then I call those his two cigarette moments. And there was a little anxiety or something that was going on. When a news crew, which had been tipped off, arrived unexpectedly, the director's secretary suddenly changed her tone. They tried to throw everybody off track with promises about, what do you need for your apartment? Could you use a new refrigerator? We had a choice. We could either have the asbestos removed or we could have the repairs done that we needed done. You know, we had people who didn't have bathtubs or kitchen sinks or stoves. So we didn't think that that was a real choice. The day ended with the group feeling they had not accomplished their goal, but their presence and persistence did have an impact. The meeting actually turned out to be more of a success than we thought, because one of the parents was able to make a statement to the press. We are sincere about having this taken care of. Once the power of the press was on board, the CHA director agreed to meet with Barack's developing communities project on their own turf, the gymnasium at Our Lady of the Gardens Church. Emotions were running high. This time, over 300 people showed up. The meeting disintegrated into pandemonium, but the point was made. And the issue was addressed. The asbestos was moved out of CHA. So I think it was a victory. I think the biggest victory, though, was the fact that parents, everyday people, forced an issue and made something happen. Success with the asbestos issue changed Obama in a fundamental way. It showed him what was possible. Whether it's participation through community organizations or what have you, we've got to get involved if we're going to make a difference. And that's an uphill battle, and I think the burden is on all the political leadership in the black community to operate with clarity and integrity to make that message clear at the grassroots level. And Barack left nothing to chance. Everything was strategically planned out. When we had a meeting, we had our speakers, our floor team, we had our agenda. Barack was able to convince the leaders that you're going to do a fantastic job, and all of us are going to be right there behind you, and you don't have anything to be afraid of because you're going to be wonderful. He was projecting onto them the quality and strength that he saw in them. I learned to analyze and strategize, to change problems into issues so that they were winnable. Working in low-income neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago, I think all that converged to give me a sense of strength. It's hard work, and stuff doesn't happen overnight. Working with the people of Chicago gave Obama a feeling of belonging that he had been searching for. He found community for the very first time in his life. Barack came to a very small but intense set of family relationships, but a larger community was something he had not had. He discovered that in the south side of Chicago and very much fell in love with it, and then the people fell in love with him. This included the women who came to be known as Obama's Mamas, who had an almost motherly concern for the slender young man. He would go out with us for lunch, and we'd be having burgers or chicken or whatever, and he'd be having a spinach salad. There are a lot of people who would make sure that he had cookies, or they was having a meal, and they wanted to come by and have fried chicken. They wanted to feed him, fatten him up. Of course, that didn't work. He would tell us that he couldn't eat anything heavy. It would slow him down and prohibit him from focusing. Barack Obama's focus was on more than organizing, however. You know, I like to say that he always felt that everybody was somebody. You know, I don't care who you were, what you had, whether you were working, whether you weren't. He always remembered who you were, what your concerns were. He knew your name. You know, he knew that your middle son was away at college, and he'd remember what college that was. This is important to people, that you recognize their value. Chicago was also helping Obama to recognize his own value and navigate his place in the racial divide, a problem he had encountered since childhood. Barack was having to work out the fact that people react to him based on his racial makeup, that he's half black, he's half white, they see him as black. What does he do with it? I mean, even if he's not focused on it, other people are. Barack Obama was born to a white mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya. His early self-image was influenced by recollections of his father's commanding presence and personality. His voice deep and sure, cajoling and laughing, his grip on my shoulder as he introduces me to one of his old friends from college, the narrowing of his eyes, the stroking of his sparse goatee. His father, however, left to study at Harvard when Barack was just two years old and returned to visit only once during his childhood. He died in a car accident in Kenya when Obama was 21. The black part of Barack's upbringing was never really there. I end up coming into adolescence at a time when the tensions between the races, even in a place like Hawaii, are becoming more pronounced. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant. TV, movies, the radio, those were the places to start. Pop culture was color-coded after all, an arcade of images from which you could cop a walk, a talk, a step, a style. I couldn't croon like Marvin Gaye, but I could learn to dance all the soul train steps and I could play basketball with a consuming passion that would always exceed my limited talent. Basketball gave the teenager self-confidence. At least on a basketball court I could find a community of sorts with an inner life all its own. It was there that I would make my closest white friends on turf where blackness couldn't be a disadvantage. Though coming to terms with being a black man in America, Obama was still troubled by the father who abandoned him. All my life I'd carried a single image of my father, one that I had sometimes rebelled against but had never questioned, one that I had later tried to take as my own. The brilliant scholar, the generous friend, the upstanding leader, my father had been all those things. But was he? After his father's death, Barack's half-sister Alma visited him in Chicago. He was 27 at the time and I was there for 10 days and I remember for the 10 days all we did was talk. We talked and talked and talked and talked. So I was filling him in and everything he needed to know about my father. From Alma, Obama learned of their father's multiple wives, confrontations with the Kenyan government, the drinking binges, and the ultimate inability to care for his many dependents. Alma's startling revelations dispelled the grandiose father image he had held. That image had suddenly vanished, replaced by what? A bitter drunk? A defeated, lonely bureaucrat? To think that all my life I've been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost. Whatever I do, it seems, I won't do much worse than he did. Obama's mother worked hard at filling in for the missing father figure. If you want to understand Barack, well, you just have to know his mom. His mom expected Barack to be the best in everything. Five days a week, she came into my room at four in the morning, force-fed me breakfast, and proceeded to teach me my English lessons for three hours before I left for school and she went to work. She would patiently repeat, this is no picnic for me either, buster. His mother's persistence encouraged a reading habit, and Obama read voraciously. Baldwin, Ellison, Hughes, Wright, Du Bois, Malcolm X. Writers who lodged an unsettling feeling in his impressionable young mind of injustices against blacks in America, and the poetry of a despairing culture. What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore, and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over, like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags, like a heavy load, or does it explode? Barack's mother also fueled his spirit with the grainy, black and white images of the Civil Rights Movement. Such images became a form of prayer for me, bolstering my spirits, channeling my emotions in a way that words never could. They told me that I wasn't alone in my particular struggles. Barack wanted to be a civil rights organizer, but he was too young, so he was looking for the closest thing possible to the Civil Rights Movement, and that was community organizing, and it also was the direction that Dr. King went. Like Martin Luther King, Barack Obama wanted to bring about change for the underclasses. But to do that, he felt he needed to temper Saul Alinsky's hard-headed approach to organizing. Alinsky organizing was very much involved with self-interest. On the other hand, there was the Civil Rights Movement, and that didn't appeal to self-interest. That appealed to people's ideals, their sense of a better world. Civil rights organizing was based in the heart, and we needed to use both, and I think that still reflects his sense of organizing and how he does things now. Communities had never been a given in this country, at least not for blacks. Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens. They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men, and in the Civil Rights Movement, those dreams had been large. Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself. That was my idea of organizing. Obama's vision and his identity were coming together, but he felt there was one more piece to the puzzle, his African heritage. He journeys to Kenya for the first time, and Alma meets him there. I was basically taking him to the places, going to see my grandmother, going to where my great-grandfather came from originally, you know, meeting all the relatives, meeting his other brothers. So it was really a continuation of that journey, and in a way it was really great, because a lot of things were going through Barack's mind. It is at his father's grave where Obama's life-altering epiphany finally comes. For a long time, I sat and wept. I saw that my life in America, the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I had witnessed in Chicago, becoming an organizer was part of that larger narrative. All of it was connected with this plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. After three years as an organizer, Obama decided it was time to move on. To make greater impact, he needed a new skill set. I think Barack loved community organizing, respects community organizing, but also saw its limitations. It does not eliminate racism. It doesn't eliminate poverty. There is enough money. There's enough power that community organizing can muster in order to do that. In the fall of 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. I had things to learn in law school, things I thought would help me bring about real change. I would learn power's currency, knowledge that would have compromised me before coming to Chicago, but that I could now bring back to where it was needed, bring it back like Promethean fire. Obama vowed to return to the city and the people he loved. He had gotten a sense of family in Chicago, and he began to understand the dynamics of how things work in Chicago, and he wanted to do a better job. At Harvard Law School, Barack Obama became so adept at relating to various sides of an issue that the conservatives at the prestigious Harvard Law Review nominated him to be president. Although I'm honored, and I think people can say that my election symbolizes some progress, at least within the small confines of the legal community, I think it's real important to keep the focus on the broader world out there and see that for a lot of kids, the doors that have been open to me aren't open to them. Barack Obama stepped to the forefront on controversial issues, like tenure for black professors at the university. And one of the persons who spoke orientation was Professor Bell, and I remember him sauntering up to the front and not giving us a lecture, but engaging us in a conversation and speaking the truth. The excellence of his scholarship has changed the standards of what legal writing is about. He hasn't done it simply by his good looks and easy charm, although he has both in ample measure. On a summer break from the law school, Obama apprenticed at a Chicago law firm, and there met Michelle Robinson, whom, of course, he later married. There's an exercise that we learned in the institute that was sponsored by Alinsky, and it was to write down the world as it is and the world as we would like it to be. When Barack repeated that to Michelle, which is a story she recounts as part of her courtship, she says that Barack taught her about the world as it is and said we could make it the world as we would like it to be. In Michelle, Barack found the life partner who would share his dream. Being president of the Harvard Law Review was a direct invitation to a position as clerk at the Supreme Court. But after graduation, Barack had other plans. I had just graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991, and I'd been fortunate enough to get a contract to write a book, a series of essays about civil rights law, and some personal reflections about the situation of African Americans and Africans. So I was in the middle of writing this book when I got a call from a person named Sandy Newman who directed a national organization called Project Vote, and they were very eager to have me direct their voter registration effort in Chicago. He asked whether he could do the job part-time, and I said I didn't think that was really possible. I was interested, but because I had this commitment to write this book, I initially declined. But about two weeks, three weeks later, Carol Moseley Braun won the nomination for the Democratic Senate nominee. Carol Moseley Braun was only the second African American senator in the 20th century. She created her own coalition of independents and African Americans associated with Harold Washington. Our task was simple. It was to get disenfranchised communities, minority communities, low-income communities to turn out to vote. Here's this guy who's just finished being the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, has a line of law firms that would like to pay him a high salary and put him on the track to being a millionaire. He's got a book publisher who's offered him a contract to publish a book that will help to make him famous, and he puts it all on hold because he cares so much about helping ordinary people. One of the problems that African Americans and marginalized people in general faced was that they were not registered and did not vote, and because they did not vote, they did not count. Project Vote nationally is geared towards registering minority and low-income voters, and historically the African American community and low-income communities tend to be under-registered, the idea being that people can only impact the major decisions that are affecting low-income minority communities if they're participating in the political system. To organize Chicago's Project Vote on a massive scale would require funding. The question was, from where would it come? By the 1980s, you had some socially conscious black businessmen, people who were willing to give their money to the African American community. Softsheen Products was extremely supportive. They designed a terrific media campaign. We had spent the money, we had done the advertise, we became a very creative business, so we knew how to get people to become registered. Barack was involved in the creation of the strategy, and he let things flow from there. He trusted enough to turn over a lot of the execution to our agency to get the things done, and I think it takes a leader to be able to do that. Softsheen's advertising arm, Brainstorm Communications, created Project Vote's powerful slogan, It's a Power Thing. At the time, there was a saying called, it's a black thing, you wouldn't understand. So we said, well, we'll make it a power thing. It's a Power Thing really became a call to action for people to really get empowered, to take advantage of the opportunity and the right to vote. It was a time when, after 12 years of Reagan and Bush, that in the African American community, there was a lot of interest in the election, a lot of support for the Democratic Party. And this was also in the 90s, Nelson Mandela had just been created. So there was a lot of kinetic energy around people kind of looking for something to latch onto, and It's a Power Thing was it. 1992, having come out of the Reagan and Bush era and the Cold War being over, there was some sense in the African American community, there was some sense of optimism. The next step was for Obama to enlist the media. I don't think that there's probably any other vehicle outside of the black church as important for African American public opinion as the radio stations, especially WVON, I think it's probably the most activist of the African American radio stations. This is the Talk of Chicago 1690 WVON, I'm Cliff Kelly and we are continuing our conversation. We were able to negotiate with the major radio stations like WVON to really drum up a lot of support for voter registration. Well, Barack actually, he knew the significance of the radio station in galvanizing the community and being that voice that could really get the word out. And so he came to ask our participation in this initiative. And so if they had an event where they sent their DJs, they would say, give us a registration table. Barack would fire up his group and send somebody over there to register people. And in that way, we worked hand in hand with the radio stations, building traffic, driving people to a particular location, try to capture people coming and going no matter where they were. Although you'd like to think that folks would register just because it was their civic duty, I think, you know, in a media age like this, you really have to reach out to young people and show that registration was hit. No matter what audience he's in front of, he has the ability to relate. And so he comes on this Black Talk radio station with all of this Ivy League background. Then he says, my name is Barack Obama. It's not your mama. It's not Osama. And he starts going at his rap. We had, I'm registered to vote. Almost as if you were a member of some club to say, yeah, I'm registered to vote. They were very organized with this movement. They actually had people that would come out and train you. They had t-shirts. They had buttons. It was very well marketed. The organizers had hoped to register 75,000 new voters. But when we heard a few days after the registration had closed, that we had gotten 150,000 voters registered, we were high-fiving, we were moonwalking, and we were doing everything we could do because it was beyond our wildest dreams that we would accomplish that. It strengthened the ability of the Black community to realize that they had power. Project Vote was very important. It was a stepping stone toward African-American political empowerment because it did register African-Americans who had been previously marginalized. Politics does matter. It can make the difference in terms of a benefits check. It can make the difference in terms of school funding. Citizens can't just remove themselves from that process. They actually have to engage themselves and not just leave it to the professionals. Project Vote became Obama's biggest accomplishment as an organizer. It also affirmed what had led him to organizing in the first place, wanting to change things. The history of Chicago independent politics is learning how to win, learning how to count votes, learning how to get your voters to the polls. They don't want symbolic victories. They want actual victories because you need power in order to do good. This is a lesson that Obama learned in Chicago, where the politics is hard-nosed, where you can't do good if you can't win office. After the grand success of Project Vote, 32-year-old Barack Obama was a rising star in Chicago. Approached by dozens of law firms, he decided to join the firm of civil rights activist Judd Minor, who had been the city attorney during Mayor Harold Washington's tenure. Barack was incredibly analytical and thoughtful. He was a wonderful writer, had a capacity to grasp issues and concepts very quickly, could absorb work very fast. The firm that I work with focuses mostly on a variety of civil rights work. We take on a lot of voting rights cases. We do a lot of employment discrimination cases. We also represent church groups who are doing a range of exciting projects, building low-income housing, trying to create Black businesses in the community, and essentially acting as their commercial lawyers. And he was interested in being a lawyer representing those organizations in their development work. There's a continuity between the work that I did with Project Vote, the work that I did as an organizer that originally brought me to Chicago, and the work that I'm doing now as an attorney. And so, you know, I'm very excited by it. Obama practiced with the law firm of Minor, Barnhill, and Gallant for almost 10 years. He also took on a second career in response to a cold call. He picked up the telephone, and I said, I'm just wondering if you have plans after law school. And Barack Obama said, well, I have a contract to write a book on voting rights. I said, well, why don't you write your book on voting rights at the University of Chicago, and we'll make you a law and government fellow. My thinking was, well, here's a promising young person, and he might want to go into law teaching. And if he does want to go into law teaching one day, and he wakes up and he's already at the University of Chicago, the path of least resistance would be for him to stay. Originally, it was going to be very much an academic book, focusing on civil rights laws and civil rights policies, and how they've changed and how they need to move as we enter the 21st century. But the concept for the book changed. And he came into the office and said, you know, Douglas, I'm working on my book, and it's taken a slightly different direction. It's not so much a book on voting rights as it is my autobiography. Okay, this is someone who's 32 years old at the time. As I wrote it, it ended up becoming much more of a personal reflection on what it means for me to be an African American, and what my relationship is to this community, as well as to Africa. This became Dreams for My Father, which he wrote in this building. At the same time, we persuaded him to teach a seminar. Barack Obama's seminars on constitutional law, voting rights, and race relations turned him into a rock star professor with hordes of devoted students. He's teaching a class in this room with 60 or 70 students, and he's talking about the most controversial issues, whether it's abortion, or voting rights, or equal protection, or Brown versus Board of Education, or gay rights. And essentially, that's what he's doing for 12 years of his adult life. And I think what makes him so refreshingly different from ordinary politicians is he didn't live in soundbites. So many politicians, the length of any thought they have can't be more than eight seconds. And he's someone who taught 65-minute classes where these issues were explored. There were some students that took the class who were much more conservative than others, and Barack was very good about including their opinions, not letting emotions take over for logic of looking at issues, and how law can help us evolve as a nation, but yet not losing sight of the fact that these are people's lives we're dealing with. Eventually, however, Barack felt his calling was neither in law firms nor law schools. As lawyers, we spend a lot of time dealing with peripheral matters that don't necessarily advance the lawsuits, and don't get to the merits and deal with the policies that you care about. And I think Barack found some of that frustrating. Obama's vision of the world as it should be was very much alive. But how could he bring about change on a greater scale? Politics? My general view about politics and running for office is that if you end up being fortunate enough to have the opportunity to serve, it's because you've got a track record of service in the community. And I think right now I'm still building up that track record. And if a point comes where I think that I can do more good in a political office than I can doing the things I'm doing now, then I might think about it. But that time is certainly in the future. It wasn't far in the future. Less than two years from this interview comment, Barack Obama decided to run for his first political office, Illinois State Senator. He told me one day that he decided he was going to run for Senate. And I said, well, why? You'd be a great senator, but it's such a long shot. Do you really want to give up two years of your life for this lottery ticket that isn't going to pay off? And that was the last time he asked me for political advice. On January 8th, 1997, Obama was sworn in as state senator for the 13th District of Illinois. His political ascension from that day forward took a few twists and turns. Running against incumbent Bobby Rush for a United States House seat in 2000 was a long shot. It wasn't even two years. This guy decides he's going to run for Congress. And what did he do that for? You know, against Bobby Rush, who was Black Panther, all-Black congressional district. How dare he? I'd just like to say this. I mean, Senator Barack, what has he done? My experience, not only as a legislator, but also as a civil rights attorney, as a community organizer, gives me the leadership skills to provide, to really make a difference in this race. Obama lost to Rush by a substantial margin. But that didn't deter him. He easily won a second term as Illinois state senator. He did not speak the conventional language of interest group politics. He spoke of a higher vision. His electrifying 2004 address at the Democratic National Convention gave him recognition across America and helped him secure the office of United States senator. When he was contemplating running for president, he called me and asked me, you know, what do you think? You think that I got a shot and we should do it? And I told him, my dad always told me you have to strike while the iron is hot. And he said, well, Rev, the iron can't get much hotter. At a launch party for the Audacity of Hope in 2006, the word was out. I walk in and I see him and I said, hey, man, you know, the rumor is on the street. What are you going to do? He said, Melody, I don't think Michelle is going to let me do this, man. I said, Barack, you got to do it. You got to do it. It's your time. In 2008, he made his mark on history. Obama's time as a community organizer was of tremendous help in his bid for the presidency. The Obama campaign was probably the best organized campaign in American history. This wonderful fusion of old time organizing and new technologies. He always appreciated the power of people in the street. A community where every person has a decent shot at a decent life, where the reality that lies behind the slogan, we are one people with one destiny, actually gets played out. No president has ever worked or lived with the poor people who are disenfranchised in the way that Barack has. When I look at President Obama, I see a community organizer who just kept widening the concentric circles of organizing. His community got larger. This is our moment. Out of many, we are one. And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people. Yes, we can. Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.