Obama's Historical Dance Partners
On Tuesday, January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama, will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America. Though the media have continually called him the first African American president, this categorization does him a disservice. Certainly, as the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, he is more legitimately African-American than most who tout the label. But even though his election has softened the edges of racial division in this country, they have not eradicated it. What is most important about our next President is not his race. Barack Obama is best defined by his exceptional intelligence, morality, demonstrated integrity, family commitment, compassionate heart, non-partisan nature, focus on what is fair over what is expedient, an understanding that democracy begins in community and his faith in God.
Related to his religious faith, which is steeped in the traditions of those who came to this country as slaves, it is interesting to consider what might be learned about the conduct of an Obama presidency from the ancestors: Gambian born ex-slave Phyllis Wheatley (1753-1784), the first African American published poet, certainly understood the importance of lyric self-expression. Her 1773 book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, brilliantly forecasts for Obama, a reader of poetry, and himself a lyric writer, how he must lead. A slave turned abolitionist and women’s rights activist, the self-named Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was heart-bound on providing freedom for an enslaved people. An illiterate woman, she knew that free hearts were inspired through stories powerfully told. As someone who shared many areas of political interest with Obama, her life reminds him that freedom and hope are deeply felt and universal needs which threads President Obama must work diligently to keep bound.
President Obama has been compared to Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) as both men are from Illinois, launched their presidential campaigns on the statehouse steps , are considered highly skilled statesmen, and have surrounded themselves with cabinet members of varied and differing perspectives. Lincoln’s example may also encourage Obama in another way. He had an interesting relationship with Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) in the period when Lincoln was pro-slavery. A firm believer in the equality of all people, Frederick Douglass united blacks, women, Native Americans and recent immigrants. He often said, “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” From Lincoln and Douglass, Obama can learn that tolerance is necessary but not always easy in the process of friendship and public governance.
As the first African American to represent Harlem in Congress, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (1908-1972) became Chairman of the Education and Labor Committee. A handsome, charismatic and powerful figure, his later career was plagued by controversies, some of his own making. Powell’s example reminds President Obama of the importance of bipartisan work and the dangers of hubris. The Luo tribe is part of the genetic admixture that includes modern East African ethnic groups and members of Buganda Kingdom, the Toro Kingdom, and the Nubians of modern Sudan. Nyang’oma-Kogelo Village, in Kenya’s Siaya district, was home to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (1936-1982) whose residents claim the new American President as one of their own. Schools and roads are named for him. As for his genetic Nubian heritage, the Broadway version of the opera Aida contains a heart-wrenching aria, The Gods Love Nubia, that declared that Nubian souls and accomplishments would not die when the Egyptians killed their people through war. Today, though not an independent country, Nubia lives again. These varied Luo ancestral voices remind President Obama of the importance of faith and resilience.
Barack Obama’s oratory has been compared to that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1939-1968); he has been forwarded as the embodiment of Dr. King’s dream for America. Dr. King’s life and work are gifts to the new president of the importance of doing the hard work of peace. On the inaugural day after Dr. King’s birthday, it is important to remember that it is likely that King died not just because he was working for social justice for Memphis garbage workers but because he was strongly speaking against unjust nature of the Vietnam war. These ancestral lessons will undoubtedly give succor to President Obama in upcoming days.
One ancestor may, however, be particularly thrilled at Obama’s arrival. There were two Senators and 19 Representatives who served following Emancipation and the Civil War, viewing in their elections from former slave-owning states the promise of America. That promise was soon breached by the rise of Jim Crow laws which toppled any hopes raised for a glorious Reconstruction. On March 3, 1901, the last proud black Congressmen, Republican George H. White of North Carolina, faced his fellow Congressmen prophesying of eventual justice for his people:
This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress but let me say Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are on behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people. (Congressional Record, House, 56th Cong., 2nd session (29 January 1901): 1638.)
While President Obama’s hopeful campaign words resounded anew to of our hungry ears, they were grounded in the histories of men and women who did not allow their circumstances to blunt their spirits, who believed that their lives had purpose, that they could not disappoint their ancestors and that God had not brought them within sight of victory to abandon them. As David Remick recently noted in the New Yorker (January 12, 2009), “history has proved that the seemingly impossible can be achieved: the Irish have all but resolved a conflict that began in the days of Oliver Cromwell, and on January 20th an African American President cross(ed) the color line and mov(ed) into the White House – a house that slaves helped build.” Indeed the phoenix has risen again. And Congressman George H. White – a black man – in sacred robe and shoes - must be dancing all over God’s Heaven.