Obama Presidential Center aims to lift Chicago, and the nation

     This is the lead article from today's special section about the opening of the Obama Presidential Section. I imagine that by now the average reader might be reaching satiety on the topic. But the arrival of the center — which officially opens June 19 — is a development of significance for the city, and newspapers tend to flood the zone at such moments. I've tried to approach it from an unusual angle, and, as always, your indulgence is appreciated.

     In 1910, Black residents made up about 2% of the population of Chicago. The overwhelming majority of African Americans still lived in the South, where slavery ended in 1865, becoming brutal peonage under Jim Crow. They had freedom, of a very limited sort. They couldn't vote. They couldn't go to school with whites, or shop in most stores, or hold many jobs. With that part of history being scrubbed from the American narrative, it bears repeating.
     But they were free to leave — just get on a train and go north, encouraged by the Chicago Defender, the influential Black newspaper which held its "Great Northern Drive" in 1917, urging Southern Blacks to quit the land that oppressed them and come to Chicago, where there was work and dignity, at least compared to the old Confederacy.
     Yes, the reception was often chilly. "BLACK MAN, STAY SOUTH!" urged the headline on a Chicago Tribune editorial, calling the migration "a huge mistake" and claiming "the Negro is happiest when the white race asserts its superiority."

     Over the next half century, half a million Blacks came to Chicago anyway. In 1970, they made up a third of the city's population. of the city.
     A story so familiar we hardly notice. List the most famous people to come out of Chicago in the past 60 years: Muhammad Ali, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan. Notice a pattern? All Black Americans who came from somewhere else, arrived here, made the best of the opportunities they found and prospered.
     The most recent, and biggest name of them all, Barack Obama, was no accident — the groundwork was carefully laid for his meteoric rise to success. Illinois elected its first Black senator, Carol Moseley Braun, in 1992 — New York State has yet to elect one; the first from California was Kamala Harris.
     So it is also fitting that Obama expressed his gratitude by planting his presidential center on the South Side where his wife Michelle was born and raised, and where he cut his political eye teeth.
     The Obama Presidential Center is a lovely gift to the city. While the central tower has been was the object of derision — called "forbidding" and a "Klingon prison" — when first glimpsed looming out from behind the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry as you travel south on Stony Island, it is surprising and dramatic, then marvelous, with its grey stone tinted with the lightest pink.
     What will the new center being here mean for the city? It has three main audiences.
     For those outside Chicago, it is a definite tourist attraction. Not an enormous one. If the Obama Center gets the million annual visitors they hope for, that'll be roughly eight million fewer than Navy Pier gets. But nationwide there are millions of people who voted for Obama, who saw their faith in this country and its possibilities surge during his two administrations. They will be interested in visiting and being immersed in his story and the First Lady's story, well-told in the central museum — which is also a stirring call for involvement and action.

To continue reading, click here.