YOU told me all those years ago you couldn’t promise me the world, but you could promise me an interesting life. And of course, you outdid yourself and managed to give me both. I know it hasn’t always been easy, but there hasn’t been a single second through this experience that standing by your side hasn’t left me in awe.
Eight years in the crucible, and not once did you melt from the heat. Not once did you let it harden you. Instead, you used it to reveal your truest essence – your stubborn optimism and unflinching courage, your dazzling brilliance and unpretentious decency, your ferocious work ethic and absolutely unshakable moral fiber.
And to do it all as a first, the highest standard that comes with all that – the claims that a U.S. Senator and constitutional law expert wasn’t qualified for the job, the lies about your birthright, your faith, your patriotism, the outrage when you stated the biological fact that if you had a son, he too would be Black. Yet you were unflappable at every turn – always focused, always calm, always looking at the long view. Tough.
How absurd it is to even imagine that you might have buckled under the pressure even once. Lashed out in frustration, lost your temper. How absurd it is that you might have done anything but make our family and the entire country proud.
No, you were too busy – I’m not done, y’all. Not done. So much to say.
You were doing the people’s work – rescuing our economy, expanding health care, ending a war, ordering the bin Laden raid, saving the industry, winning a peace prize. Keeping us safe from Ebola, regulating the banks, standing up for marriage equality. Listening to science! And comforting an entire nation in the face of unspeakable tragedies. And you did it all with such grace and class and cool that you made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park.
Your mother – you are a tribute to their love. They are up there grinning and hugging today, because you never forgot who you are and where you came from. A single mother working hard to get by and get an education and show her son the world. Grandparents who didn’t have much, but they had the perfect recipe to nurture your flame.
You never forgot the folks in the union halls and church basements here in Chicago where you first put your ideals to the test. You never forgot all the voters you registered and students you taught and neighbors you organized. You never fell for the temptation of a quick fix or an easy payday. You never changed from that idealistic summer associate who showed up on that rainy day when we first met, without an umbrella.
You always gave us the very best within you, and in doing so, you reminded the rest of us that we could too.
Barack, there are no words to express how proud I am of the way you showed up and continue to show up every single day. It has been an honour to be by your side. You have made me a better person and have given us all an example that we should strive to emulate. And I hope you know – oh, there is truly no higher calling than that.
The Obama Presidential Center was created as a beacon of hope, a monument to our unshakable values, the ones my husband has exemplified his entire life: equality, empathy, honesty, inclusion, fairness.
And especially during these anxious and divisive times, it is so important that we remember that those values are not unique to my husband. They are the same ones that your husbands and wives, your parents and children, your friends and neighbors exhibit and pass on every single day. Millions of people in this country wake up doing their very best to live decent and purposeful lives.
We are all tested in one way or another, and there are plenty of times where we all fall short. But deep down in our hearts and souls, we all know right from wrong. We know selflessness from greed, righteousness from injustice. We understand that we all rise and fall together, that every last one of us is an invaluable contributor to the greatness of our country.
And I’m talking about the workers living paycheck to paycheck, helping to give their kids a better future. The teachers using their own money to take their students on field trips. The business owners struggling to make payroll but refusing to close their doors. All the folks sweating over stoves to provide meals for their communities. Folks shivering in the freezing cold to deliver our packages, picking up trash to keep our parks clean. Volunteers dedicating their weekends to coaching tee-ball, or directing the church choir, or mentoring a child.
That’s where the truth of this country lies – not in grabbing as much as we can get for ourselves, or knocking folks down to prop ourselves up, but in the overwhelming goodness, the relentless striving, the quiet dignity that is inside all of us. Our greatest hope is that this center can reflect back just a fraction of that light – that it can capture the beauty of who we all are, no matter what we look like, or where we come from, or how much money we earn, or how we pray or vote or speak or love.
It’s why during our administration, we threw open the White House doors to all sorts of folks who don’t usually get to meet the president or first lady. The families pinching pennies to send their first child to college. The teenagers who know that on a hot afternoon, the bullets start flying. The military spouses and children serving and sacrificing just like their loved ones in uniform. The Native kids showing us that resilience and pride can never be stolen. The 4-H-ers and the Dreamers – these folks, these folks aren’t Americans too. They are America. They are the beating heart of this country. They are us, and we are them.
And to ignore that simple truth, to refuse to respect the contributions and experiences of people who aren’t exactly like us, y’all, puts us all at risk. Failing to see the humanity in all people puts us all on a slippery slope, and once that slide starts, there’s no telling where it stops – a dangerous precedent that flies in the very face of our faith and of the founding promise of this democracy, that all of us, all of us, are created equal. That each of us is a child of God with inherent value, and no one – and I mean no one – has the right to sit in judgment of who is American enough.
And that’s why, folks, we simply don’t have the luxury or time to be cynical or complacent, to wring our hands in despair, to wait for someone else to fix the problem. Y’all, hope is all we have. Because hope is the essential spark that lights the fire of change. But hope is a choice. Whether or not we use our voices to speak up is a choice. Voting is a choice. Being a decent human being is a choice. Believing that we still hold the power to build a country that reflects us all is a choice.
The Obama Presidential Center is a living testament to the power of choice, y’all. This is a historic example of what millions of you gave the world about what this imperfect democracy has strived for and achieved, and an urgent call to go out there and do it again.
So I hope that when you walk through this campus and bring your children here, you are reminded of the power of choice and the steady work of change – the arduous, unglamorous march up that mountain, one foot after another, day after day, generation after generation. But I hope also you fully absorb the elation of achieving something together – you know, that feeling when you clear the tree line and see a vista that takes your breath away, a feeling that can never be erased.
And I know that can be hard to grasp right now, when everything feels so upside down, when fact and fiction run together, when folks work to limit speech, limit education, diversity, erase the inconvenient parts of history. When our phones constantly buzz with the latest outrage.
So I hope that this place can offer a respite from all that, at least for a little while. I hope it can reignite the optimism and empathy and ambition that always empowered the country’s greatest change. We want you to come here and put away your phones and talk and laugh and cry — because you’re going to cry — and flake and make new friends. Get your hands dirty in my garden. Push your baby on a swing on the playground. Have a romantic picnic on the Great Lawn. Because that’s the work of democracy too — being neighborly, taking care of public spaces, having some fun, enjoying each other, shaking out of the isolation and division that have crept too deeply into our lives.
And to my fellow South Siders, I want you all to make this campus a part of your lives. Be inspired by the world-class art. Check out the books from our beautiful public library and bring them back on time. Drop some beats in the recording studio. Hit some corner threes at the court. Host birthday parties. Host city cleanups here. Use the campus. Host this place we call home.
This joyful place where Mary and Frazier Robinson taught their kids to dream big. A hopeful place where an unknown guy with an unknown name took root. This stubbornly optimistic place where family after family scrapes and claws and laughs and dances their way to a better tomorrow.
That’s what this has always been about. Barack and I have always said that this center is grounded in our stories, but it has never been about us. It’s never been for us. And it’s going to be here long after we’re gone. So what it becomes and how it’s preserved – that work has to be done by all of us, just like our democracy.
And thankfully, you have shown the world what we are capable of. You have proven that a lasting legacy isn’t an award, or a name on a building, or a number of zeros in a bank account, but the difference we make in one another’s lives. It’s about seeing each other and showing up for each other, and carrying each other when we’re weary or faltering or losing faith. That’s how you build something that endures. And that is what you have all done at every twist and turn of this extraordinary journey.
You have protected and proclaimed the hope that beats within the heart of this campus. You’ve rekindled and renewed this untamable, unpredictable, and unbreakable democracy. I know you are going to astonish us in the months and years ahead, because you all have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that when we truly see each other, when we strive to bring out the best in ourselves and one another – oh, there is no limit to how high we can go.
Thank you all. I love you all. God bless you, and God bless this country we love.
- This is an edited version of Michelle Obama’s tribute to her husband Barack, the USA’s 44th President, at the dedication of the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago, USA
