Original subtitles

"We the people,

in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty-one years ago,

in a hall that still stands across the street,

a group of men gathered, and with these simple words,

launched America's improbable experiment in democracy.

The document they produced was eventually signed,

but ultimately unfinished.

It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery.

I chose to run for president

at this moment in history because I believe deeply

that we cannot solve the challenges of our time

unless we solve them together.

Unless we perfect our union

by understanding that we may have different stories,

but we hold common hopes,

that we may not look the same

and may not have come from the same place,

but we all want to move in the same direction,

towards a better future

for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith

in the decency and generosity of the American people.

But it also comes from my own story.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

OBAMA: I am the son of a Black man from Kenya

and a white woman from Kansas.

I was raised with the help of a white grandfather

who survived the Depression to serve in Patton's army

during World War II,

and a white grandmother who worked

on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth

while he was overseas.

I've gone to some of the best schools in America,

and I've lived in one of the world's poorest nations.

I am married to a Black American

who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners,

an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.

I have brothers, sisters, nieces,

nephews, uncles, and cousins of every race and every hue

scattered across three continents.

And for as long as I live, I will never forget

that in no other country on Earth

is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me

the most conventional of candidates.

But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup

the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts.

That out of many, we are truly one.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, Black and white,

I have never been so naïve as to believe

that we can get beyond our racial divisions

in a single election cycle or with a single candidate.

But I have asserted a firm conviction...

a conviction rooted in my faith in God

and my faith in the American people...

that working together...

we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds.

And that, in fact, we have no choice.

We have no choice if we are to continue

on the path of a more perfect union.

♪ (THEME MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

REPORTER: Meet Barack Obama,

a Harvard-educated Chicago civil rights attorney.

Obama has done and seen much in his 34 years of life.

He was raised in Hawaii, Indonesia,

and is one of very few African Americans

who can boast of tangible living proof of African roots.

My parents made me appreciate different cultures,

uh, but the notion that one culture

or one race was superior to another, uh,

was not in my, sort of, wiring, so to speak.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

OBAMA: My parents met in Hawaii.

My father was part of that first wave of young Africans

to travel abroad to get an education.

They ended up getting married, having me.

My father decided he wanted to get his PhD,

obtained a scholarship to go to Harvard.

He moved there,

but the separation made it difficult

for them to stay together.

Not to mention, this was an interracial couple

at the brink of the civil rights movement.

My mother was from Kansas,

and she was born to a pair of fairly typical midwestern,

white Americans in a lot of ways.

What made them remarkable was that they ended up

being more open-minded

and accepting of difference and diversity than, I think,

was maybe typical of their generation

and their time.

So I don't think that there was a sense of my difference,

racially, as I was growing up.

I mean, Hawaii was a...

sort of a unique kind of melting pot.

Then, when I was six, my mother remarried an Indonesian.

And we moved to Indonesia,

which certainly made me feel different,

but it had more to do with the fact

that I was an American living in a third-world country

than the fact that I was an African American.

It probably wasn't until I came back from Indonesia

and I was around ten years old or so,

that it became an issue.

I obtained a scholarship to a prep school in Hawaii.

At that point, suddenly, I looked around and said,

"You know, there aren't that many folks who look like me."

JOELLA EDWARDS: When he first came into school,

when Barry first came, I was excited.

I-- For me, being a little girl, being--

I haven't been there from first grade to fifth grade,

I had been by myself, and when I say by myself,

I just mean because I'm the only little Black girl there.

And being teased all the time was very difficult for me.

I didn't like my own skin.

So when I saw him, I thought,

"Oh, he's just like me, but he's a guy.

But he's the same color skin, and maybe we can be allies,

maybe we can work together

and they won't tease me as much."

OBAMA: My mother had inculcated in me the sense

that being African American was a-- a wonderful thing.

You know, that it was special in some way.

I didn't really know my father growing up.

He had left my mother by the time I was two,

and I didn't really meet him again until I was ten.

And basically learned of him

through the stories my mother would tell

and my grandparents would tell me.

The consensus was he was the smartest man

they had ever met.

So, the image that I had of being a Black American was--

was almost exclusively positive.

It's ironic, you know, that I got this wonderful

sort of Black history lesson

from this, uh, white woman from Kansas.

My mother really was somebody who identified so greatly

with the civil rights movement

that that was almost our civil religion.

She was constantly talking about King and Malcolm,

and the struggles that were taking place

in the United States.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: Because of prejudices and narrow-mindedness,

negroes have been held out of the political arena,

but I do think that the day will come

in the not-too-distant future

when the negro vote itself will be powerful enough

to be in a coalition

with, uh, liberals in the white community

and thereby elect a negro president of the United States.

ANTHONY PETERSON: My first memory of meeting Barry Obama

is that our mutual friend introduced us.

There were only four Black students

out of 1,600 students in the-- in high school that year.

Barry was a freshman,

he had just come into the high school.

We talked about school, we talked about girls,

and we talked about whether the non-Black girls at our school,

which was all the girls at our school,

would ever date us.

We were used to being in situations

where we were the only Black person there,

or we were bridging two cultures.

I mean, that was just a part of how each of us had grown up.

We had a standing meeting about once a week,

and we called our standing meeting

"ethnic corner," which was tongue-in-cheek.

We talked about social issues

because that was important to us.

And, so, one of those questions was,

"Will we ever see a Black president in our lifetime?"

Our consensus was, uh, there will be a Black president,

but it won't be in our lifetime.

OBAMA: By the time I was an adolescent

and was struggling with issues of racial identity

and a father not being in the house,

I reacted by engaging in a lot of, uh, behavior

that's not untypical of Black males...

uh, across the country.

-(APPLAUSE) -(COMMENTATOR SPEAKING OVER PA)

OBAMA: I played a lot of basketball,

didn't take school that seriously,

got into fights,

drank and consumed substances that weren't always legal.

And that was also at a time when Roots

was first appearing on television,

and there were just a lot of icons of Black identity--

Shaft and Super Fly--

forced me to figure out as I moved through high school,

what did it mean to be a Black man in America?

And also embrace my mixed heritage.

We both went to Occidental College

in the fall of 1979 as freshmen,

and we were in the same dormitory.

Barack was always very self-confident,

he was fun to be around and easy-going

and a good conversationalist.

OBAMA: It turned out that I really liked to read,

and I liked to argue politics with my professors,

and I really, sort of like a sponge,

started soaking up a lot of, uh, information,

and spent the first two years there

sort of rediscovering what was important to me...

(CROWD CHANTING)

...and was active in a lot of campus activism.

PROTESTORS: Divest! Divest! Divest! Divest!

There were student groups that were trying to get

the college to divest from investing in South Africa.

(APPLAUSE)

And there was a rally in front of where the board was meeting,

the trustees, and Barack was the first speaker at that rally.

-All right. -(CROWD CHEERS)

We called this rally today to bring attention

to Occidental's investments in South Africa,

and Occidental's lack of investment

in multicultural education.

(CROWD CHEERING)

-There is no... -AUDIENCE MEMBER: Go, Barry!

(CROWD SCREAMING, APPLAUDING)

PHIL BOERNER: Barack did a staged thing

where he was carted off,

supposedly by Afrikaners, I guess,

to sort of symbolize what was going on in South Africa.

It was just one of the many issues,

along with the 1980 election and bringing back the draft,

that was being discussed on campus.

PROTESTOR: (OVER MICROPHONE) Are we gonna take the responsibility to change it?

(CROWD CHEERS)

OBAMA: That was the first time that I had spent

a lot of time on the mainland United States.

I became close to a collection of African American professors

and Latino activists, and international students,

and it was a terrific period of growth for me.

But after two years at Occidental,

I decided that I needed a change.

It was a small liberal arts college.

So I transferred to Columbia University

in New York City,

and became very interested in issues of social change

and politics and public policy and government,

and started really thinking more seriously about who I was

and what I wanted to be.

GENEVIEVE AHEARNE: I was doing a masters

in early childhood education in New York,

and I was living at home with my parents.

I was invited to a Christmas party,

and I'm not much of a partygoer, so... (CHUCKLES)

I was about to go home, when Barack stopped me

and, um, introduced himself to me.

And he must have said something a little bit compelling,

'cause instead of leaving as I was ready to do,

we ended up sitting down on a-- on a beanbag by the front door

and talked for a long time.

We both grew up moving around and in other countries,

and just instantly had a lot in common.

It was really bizarre when we both realized

we'd lived in Indonesia as children at the same time.

It felt extraordinary.

We had very parallel stories, it seemed.

His mother was an anthropologist and I was an anthropology major.

There was just this fast and furious conversation

about who we were and where we come from,

which, if you grow up moving around

and feeling like an outsider,

is not at all a common experience.

OBAMA: For a lot of children, when you move around a lot,

you don't feel part of things.

You-- you're sort of outside looking in.

I think that probably the greatest effect it had on me

was I think it reinforced my general belief

that, under the skin, people were the same

and that whatever circles I traveled in,

um, I could find a common spirit or a common ground.

AHEARNE: The week after we met,

we fell into a kind of relationship.

We just shared such a similar history

and such a similar sensibility

about what we were doing in New York

and how we saw ourselves as actors in a world

where we cared a lot about what we were

either choosing to do or about to choose to do.

We just seemed very much on the same page

as far as being young and very idealistic.

OBAMA: For a year, I worked as a financial journalist

to pay off my student loans and started looking

for work as a community organizer

or political activist.

And it turned out that it was actually harder

to find work doing good than I had expected.

♪ (MELODIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

JERRY KELLMAN: The Indiana-Illinois bi-state region

was the largest producer of steel in the country,

and, uh, the steel mills were closing all over the place.

So I began a project pulling churches together

to see what could be done for steel workers.

A large part of the area was the South Side of Chicago,

and there I was, a white organizer

dealing with an all-African American community.

LORETTA AUGUSTINE-HERRON: Community organizing for us was so new.

There was actually no one in our community

that we could tap as a resource for a director.

We needed someone who looked like us,

thought like us, and understood our problems.

KELLMAN: I put ads in some newspapers.

Barack saw it in the New York Public Library.

We did a-- a long-- a long phone conversation,

uh, which-- part of which I was trying to determine

was he Black or not.

AHEARNE: He had the skin to step into that world,

but he didn't have the cultural background.

That was what concerned him,

is, "How can I walk into a community,

not only as an outsider,

but also as a person who ought to have legitimacy

if it's in the Black community?"

But I think he was reluctant to talk

about how that was shaping up to be the next move,

because it also meant conversations

about breaking up, which was happening anyway.

There was something about who we were together

that he really, um, was plugged into,

very legitimately, but there was

this other part in him which could see

that there was no good end to this particular love story.

Yeah.

♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

OBAMA: I drove out to Chicago not knowing a single person.

This was in 1985, and so I was, uh, 24 years old.

KELLMAN: It was really a pivotal time in his life.

Coming to Chicago for him was a chance to get rooted

in a way he'd never had before

and to experience how things get done

in a big city in the United States.

He had never dealt with politics

and the kind of naked power that's in Chicago.

(CROWD CHEERING)

-You want Harold? -CROWD: Yeah!

-You got him! -(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: Part of the reason I had been attracted to Chicago

was reading about Harold Washington

and the inspiration that African Americans

across the country had taken from his election

as the first African American mayor in Chicago.

The election of Harold Washington

signified a sea change, politically,

like nothing we've ever seen in Chicago.

It finally sent the message to African Americans

and others who had been left out of the system

that it was their turn to have some access

and to have some power in the community.

-(INDISTINCT CHANTING) -(BOOING)

KELLMAN: Chicago was an extremely racially divided city.

Go, go, go!

It was a fact of life, and it was in our face,

and it was always coming up.

(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)

LAURA WASHINGTON: He saw a city that was suffering

under deep inequity, and he wanted to change that.

And he made no apologies for that.

He said, "I'm going to be fair to you.

It doesn't matter if you're white,

it doesn't matter if you're Black,

I'm gonna find you and I'm gonna be fair to you."

KELLMAN: The first few months,

Barack came in, uh, very serious. (CHUCKLES)

You know, he'd, uh, be reading,

he'd be working on his notes at night.

He was a bit monkish.

And so I did have a concern the first few months

that, um, he would burn out.

OBAMA: I was pretty green behind the ears.

Not really knowing anything about Chicago,

not knowing that much about the church.

AUGUSTINE-HERRON: In the Black community,

the church is usually the base of everything.

That's where people get their strength.

And so, during this time,

to bring those churches together, this is power.

KELLMAN: We'd use the church as a base for organizing.

I asked him to go to a different church every Sunday.

You get to know the church better if you're there on Sunday.

The pastor appreciates you being there.

He just asked if he could have about 15 minutes of my time

to talk about working in the community,

which was really right up my alley.

But I think, you know, in his early days,

he had some real difficulties.

And one of the challenges that Obama had was that,

you know, he-- he did not talk

like the regular guy on the street.

And so, I think that gave some people

some kind of suspicion, uh, of him as an outsider.

(INDISTINCT CONVERSATION)

AUGUSTINE-HERRON: When I say he did his homework,

he did his homework.

He got to know the people he was working with.

I came from a community that was inundated

by waste and pollution, lack of jobs.

And we needed someone to encourage us.

To make us want to do the things that we needed

to improve our community.

(CROWD CHEERING)

AUGUSTINE-HERRON: We rallied. We did good.

We broke up meetings behind closed doors.

You're talking about a sense of power.

You know, and these are the kind of things

that Barack thought about and we did.

OBAMA: It was the best education of my life.

It allowed me to not only to learn some of the skills

of organizing and politics,

but, uh, more importantly, it gave me a home.

It rooted me in a community of African Americans

whose values and stories I soaked up.

KELLMAN: Sooner or later, what happens to you,

if you're working with a lot of pastors,

they want to know... "Where do you go to church?

Who's your pastor?"

ALVIN LOVE: We talked about the need for him to be spiritually grounded

if he was going to do this kind of work, uh, in the church.

Um, and that even if he wasn't,

he needed to be spiritually grounded,

and he needed to make that decision, uh, for himself

and by himself.

JEREMIAH WRIGHT: I have a friend who, every time you greet him,

every time you ask him, "How're you doing?"

He answers...

"Just trying to make it, man.

Just trying to make it."

WRIGHT: When Barack first came to see me, he said...

"I want to make an intelligent choice.

I just don't want to join because I like the music

or it was a great service."

He wanted to make an intelligent decision

about his faith.

CORNEL WEST: Reverend Jeremiah Wright is one of the giants

in the Black prophetic tradition of the 20th century.

He's deeply influenced by Malcolm X,

in some ways even more than Martin Luther King, Jr.

Studied at University of Chicago,

so he was both a scholar as well as a powerful preacher.

How about the fact that we have pledged

to take what we've got as Black people

and put it back into the Black community?

That's what I want to ask.

MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: He was deeply entrenched in an Afrocentric perspective,

and also a man deeply rooted in the politics and culture

of African American society,

and brought those to bear in criticizing racial injustice

and social inequity in the society around him.

WRIGHT: In a conversation with Christ,

what the word says about racism comes through loud and clear.

Now, Jeremiah Wright has always been one to engage

in a very, very intense critique not just of white supremacy,

but of the American empire.

Apartheid is wrong! Oppression is wrong!

-(ATTENDEES CHEERING) -Anybody who feels white skin

is superior to black skin is wrong!

The president of the US,

who doesn't even know his own Black cabinet members,

-is wrong! -(ATTENDEES CHEERING)

As we talked more about the Black church...

in one of the conversations,

I mentioned that at the University of Chicago

I had studied under Fazlur Rahman.

He said, "The Muslim?" I said, "Yeah."

That's when I found out he had family members

who were Muslim.

And we began talking about the similarities

and differences.

I found him to be a very intelligent young man

and our conversations increased.

The culture says, "You are ugly."

The Christ says, "You are beautiful."

The culture says, "Your skin is black."

The Christ says, "And so was mine."

(ATTENDEES CHEER, APPLAUD)

LOVE: Once he made his decision to join the church,

you could see a marked difference

in-- in his groundedness.

I think prior to that,

Barack was searching for himself,

both himself in the African American community,

but also himself in the faith community.

I-- I think it had real value and real meaning to him.

AUMA OBAMA: I got a letter. I was in Germany studying.

And the letter, I looked at the sender,

and it was Barack Obama.

And the thing that really startled me

when I got the letter was that he had--

it had the same handwriting as my father's.

And my father used to write to me, and...

you know, so I was like, "What is going on?"

This is like, I don't know, two years or three years

after my father has died.

So I opened the letter, kind of feeling really strange,

and it turns out to be Barack Obama, Jr.

I grew up knowing that I had a brother in Hawaii

because my father was very proud of him.

And his mother always sent Barack's school results,

so we knew about him.

But as a child, you don't really relate.

We got to meet each other in Chicago, finally.

We, uh, decided on that,

we needed to get to know each other.

And immediately it was like,

"This is somebody I've known all my life."

And we didn't stop talking for about two days.

He asked me so many questions about family,

about his father-- in particular about his father.

I think it was a big hole in his life.

We don't know the reasons why his father

couldn't see him more, be around him more,

but I could at least relay to him that

"Your father loved you very, very much."

He came and visited me in Kenya,

and in that time, we continued talking.

Although I couldn't fill this hole

that Barack had lived with all his life,

I could reduce it

because it was filled with family

and stories that were not just made up.

And I think that was something that he needed to have,

and it helped in his development

and what he was trying to do with his life.

♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

KELLMAN: We were taking a walk, and he said,

"I've decided to, uh, go to law school."

I said, "Okay, um, that's reasonable. Why?"

You know. And, uh-- uh, he talked about power,

that, uh, he didn't see having the--

getting enough power to change things

through community organizing.

He wanted to have some kind of platform

to be able to create greater change.

OBAMA: I was 27 when I got to law school.

It meant that I had gotten a lot of errant, uh, energy

out of the way. (CHUCKLES)

I knew why I was there

and what I wanted to get out of it.

When I first met him, he seemed...

He was a Black guy from Chicago with this African-sounding name,

and I had no idea of his unusual background.

He had a very sort of wise presence about him.

He always had something that was a little different to say

that seemed a bit more well thought out

than the other students.

OBAMA: I had learned, as an organizer,

to be able to articulate a position and express myself,

and I had great enthusiasm for the subject matter.

And I think when you're interested in something,

you end up, uh, doing well.

And I ended up elected as the first

African American president of the Law Review at Harvard.

It was obvious from the beginning that

Barack was gonna be a formidable candidate.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

KEN MACK: He just impressed people around him.

But when Barack was elected,

I, frankly, was-- was a bit surprised.

Race was a huge issue in the Harvard Law Review,

as it was everywhere else in this society.

And everybody understood that this was gonna be

a huge symbol.

OBAMA: I think it's a good sign. I think it's a sign of progress.

Although I'm honored and I think people can, uh,

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, uh, the-- the broader world out there

and see that, uh... uh , for a lot of kids, uh,

the doors that have been open to me aren't open to them.

(PROTESTORS CHANTING)

MACK: Harvard Law School in the late 1980s, early 1990s,

was a place where people talked

and argued about racial issues

because it's a reflection of the larger society,

that's what Americans were doing.

(PROTESTORS CHANTING)

REPORTER: There are 1,600 students

here at Harvard Law School.

Nearly a quarter are people of color

and nearly 40 percent are women,

yet Harvard Law School's faculty contains

only five tenured women professors

and only three tenured Black professors.

Professor Derrick Bell was the first Black granted tenure

at Harvard Law School back in 1969.

Now, he's taking a leave of absence

until the school tenures its first Black woman professor.

Bell's protest had its origin in the faculty diversity movement,

which was a nationwide movement.

And there was a lot of discussion

about whether and to what extent

Barack should be involved.

This was a very controversial thing.

There was the matter of what are the appropriate things

for the president of the Harvard Law Review

to speak out on, and what are-- are not.

OBAMA: I remember that the Black law students

had organized an orientation for the first-year students,

and one of the persons who spoke at that 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

that I've carried with me ever since.

Now, how did this one man do all this?

How has he accomplished all this?

He hasn't done it simply by his good looks

-and easy charm. -(CROWD LAUGHING)

OBAMA: Although he has both in ample measure.

(CROWD LAUGHING)

OBAMA: He hasn't done it

simply because of the excellence of his scholarship,

although his scholarship has opened up new vistas

and new horizons,

and changed the standards of what legal writing is about.

(CROWD CHEER, APPLAUD)

OBAMA: I spent three years at law school

continuing the same line of questioning

that I had been engaging in as a community organizer.

How do we bring about a more just society?

You know, what are the institutional arrangements

that would give people, uh, opportunity?

PANEL MODERATOR 1: Every day, on the news, we hear that we're in a recession.

That violent crime is increasing,

that millions of Americans,

including so many of our children, are homeless.

And that our education system must be reformed.

PANEL MODERATOR 2: We have assembled a distinguished panel

to explore these problems.

I really would like for Mr. Obara to--

uh, Obama to respond to this since he is young and Black.

Whenever we blame society for everything,

or blame white racism for everything,

um, then inevitably, we're giving away our own power

to some extent.

Um, at the same time,

we can't let the federal government off the hook

or the judiciary system off the hook.

I mean, the fact of the matter is

we can take individual responsibility

but still mobilize as communities

to make the kinds of structural changes

that are gonna be necessary.

As the first African American president of the Law Review,

I ended up generating a lot of publicity.

That put me in a position where, leaving law school,

I pretty much could write my own ticket...

and decided not to take what might have been

the more conventional route clerking on the Supreme Court

and working in a large law firm.

I read a newspaper article one day that indicated

that an African American lawyer was returning to Chicago.

He had been editor in chief of the Harvard Law Review.

He wanted-- he was interested in civil rights.

I did nothing but civil rights work.

And, so, I figured what the hell, I'll call him.

He said, "You know, every firm is recruiting me."

And he indicated that

he wasn't sure what he wanted to do.

But would I be willing to have lunch with him,

just-- just to talk.

We probably had three or four lunches.

And finally after the summer, he said to me out of the blue,

"Aren't you going to offer me a job?" (CHUCKLES)

I said, well, "Are you interested?"

And he said, "Well, I-- I think I am."

But he didn't come back here because of me.

(CHUCKLES)

He-- he came to Chicago because of Michelle.

He had worked the summers at a law firm in Chicago,

and she was at one of those law firms,

and he liked Michelle.

I first met Michelle Robinson when she was thinking of leaving

her private law firm, and a good friend of mine,

who was the head of the law department at the city,

sent her resume down to me.

Across the top was written, "Outstanding young superstar,

wants to leave the private practice,

interested in government service."

I invited in Michelle for an interview,

and rather than selling her resume, as people often do,

she told me her story.

The story of growing up on the South Side of Chicago.

Being a product of the Chicago public school system,

going on off to outstanding schools,

Princeton and Harvard.

And I was so blown away by her, I offered her a job on the spot.

JUDD MINER: I told him the firm was interested in hiring him,

and he shared with me that he had-- had this contract

to write a book.

And he said to me, um, you know,

"I-- I don't want to start working

while I'm doing this. I'll-- it'll be a distraction.

I'd rather finish the book,

so that I can really roll up my sleeves and practice law."

OBAMA: I had graduated from law school in 1991.

and I had been fortunate enough to get a contract

to write a series of essays about civil rights laws

and-- and civil rights policies and how they've changed

and how they need to move,

uh, as-- as we enter the, uh, 21st century.

Um, so I was in the middle of writing this book

when I got a call from the national organization,

called Project Vote,

and they were very eager to have me

direct their voter registration effort in Chicago.

(CROWD CHEERING)

I want to continue serving as your president

four more years,

-so from this moment-- -(CROWD CHEERING)

NEWSCASTER 1: Well, if the economy is the most important political issue

in this campaign this year, and it certainly is,

then it's particularly important to Blacks

because they are hurting the most.

Black people are further behind now

than we were thirty years ago!

-BILL CLINTON: What's your name? -Rodney.

NEWSCASTER 1: For the Democratic candidates,

Black voters, traditionally loyal Democrats, are important.

NEWSCASTER 2: But some now worry the Black community

is being taken for granted.

NEWSCASTER 3: Despite voter education efforts, people are still staying away

from the polls this presidential primary season.

NEWSCASTER 4: The decline in voting has been especially dramatic

among Blacks, many of whom see no one to vote for.

If the elections were to be held this evening,

I wouldn't vote at all.

OBAMA: It was a critical election.

You also had Carol Moseley Braun on the ticket as potentially

the first African American senator from Illinois,

and the only one in, uh, the senate generally.

Average citizens, working people, women,

minorities don't have a voice there right now.

And so, uh, my election will make a radical difference,

uh, by virtue of-- of giving voice to those interested

-in those concerns. -(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: About two weeks later, Carol Moseley Braun

won the Democratic senate nomination,

and at that point, I realized that

this presented an opportunity, in Illinois, to, uh, enfranchise

and-- and engage a lot of African American voters

that, uh, previously had not been involved.

RADIO HOST: On the line with me from Chicago is Barack Obama,

State Director of Illinois Project Vote.

OBAMA: At some point, you're gonna have to have leadership.

Giving people some sense

that the debates about the issues are real.

That by the time an election comes about,

people are already plugged in. They already feel invested.

We have victory in our hands,

we just have to hold on to it.

(CROWD CHEERING)

CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN: There was such a tradition in this country,

particularly with the Great Migration,

of Black people not getting involved in electoral politics.

And so, Project Vote said we're gonna take the message out

to these people in the communities,

and explain to them why not only is it their right,

but their obligation.

OBAMA: There's the old story that when America is sick,

Black folks have pneumonia.

Since Black folks are suffering even more

than the general population,

what that means is we're even more cynical

and more skeptical about the political process.

But citizens can't just remove themselves from that process.

We've got to get involved

if we're going to make a difference.

NEWSCASTER 5: The election is five days away, but business is already brisk

at the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners office.

A record number of people have registered to vote

in the Chicago area.

VOTER: All the programs that's out right now

saying, "You should vote," I've been listening to them,

and now it's time to take a-- make a stand.

MOSELEY BRAUN: Project Vote had a lot of grassroots people

active in getting people signed up to vote,

and they were very successful doing it.

And I hope that my election opened up doors for women,

for people of color, for people from working class backgrounds.

I hope that it cut through some of these barriers.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have any plans to run for political office?

You know, uh, not at the moment.

Uh, I've only been married, uh, a year,

and so I need to spend a lot of time with my wife.

♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I've got a real full plate at the moment.

I teach a course at the, uh, University of Chicago,

uh, in civil rights law.

You know, I'm working in my law practice.

We do a lot of employment discrimination cases,

voting rights cases.

That keeps me pretty busy.

If you end up being fortunate enough

to-- to have the opportunity to serve, uh,

it's because you've got a track record of, uh, of service

in-- in the community.

Uh, and I think, uh, right now,

I'm still building up that track record.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me about the book that you are working on

about race relations.

Well, you know, it's, uh,

it's actually changed quite a bit.

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 a reflection on my father, in particular,

who passed away quite a while ago.

CONNIE MARTINSON: My guest today is truly the epitome of that word

"African American."

He has written a wonderful autobiography,

as well as a look at America called Dreams From My Father.

My guest is Barack Obama.

I did say African American, and the fact that your father,

who also was Barack Obama, uh, was from Kenya.

OBAMA: That's right. My father returned to Kenya,

and essentially became sort of a mythic figure to me.

-MARTINSON: The icon. Yeah. -An icon.

-Your father comes back once when you're ten. -OBAMA: Right.

And it isn't till years later that you learn the real story

-of what happened to him back in Kenya. -OBAMA: Right.

And then because he starts to speak up

and because of the changing political scheme.

You know, the, uh-- uh-- he ends up

being blacklisted from the government,

uh, and, uh, in fact dies a very bitter and lonely man.

Uh, and, uh--

There is a tragic element to that

and-- and part of what I had to come to terms with

in writing the book,

and in discovering that entire side of my life

and my family, was to-- was to really recognize

that, uh, he had been shaped by many of the forces

that I had-- was struggling with as a youth.

Uh, that he, uh, as an African,

uh, although was not genetically mixed...

-MARTINSON: Mm-hmm. -...uh, so to speak,

culturally was caught in this cross-pollinization,

this hybridization,

this-- this movement from traditional African society

into suddenly being catapulted into the modern age.

And-- and, uh, I think in the end,

he was not ever quite able to completely bridge

that-- that schism between modern life and traditional life

that probably, uh, is a schism that,

for him, at least, was just as powerful

as any schism between Black and white.

-Good evening. -ATTENDEES: Good evening.

Thank you very much.

I, uh...

The section that I'm going to read for you right now,

uh, takes place during my adolescence,

and I'm a very angry man, uh, young man,

partly because my father is absent,

partly because I'm trying to struggle--

What does it mean exactly to be a Black man in America?

"The only thing you could choose as your own

was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage,

until being Black meant only the knowledge

of your own powerlessness and your own defeat.

And the final irony, should you refuse this defeat

and lash out at your captors,

they would have a name for that too.

A name that could cage you just as good.

Like paranoid. Or militant.

Or violent. Or nigger."

What-- what I discovered--

and I tried to write about this in the book--

is that, I guess, that the solution for me

to that sense of isolation

was to throw myself into a community.

Uh, to basically, uh, decide--

And I-- it wasn't articulated in my mind at the time,

but in retrospect, I can see what I was doing.

Um, I ended up, um...

deciding that my individual fate

had to be tied to something larger than myself.

Okay, thank you very much!

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: Hyde Park, Chicago, is a place

where you find your people pretty quickly.

In those years it was all about dinner,

and dinner at other people's houses,

and dinner with a lot of people around the table.

And I think that all of us were trying to figure out,

uh, what we wanted to do with the opportunities

that we had, um, to be useful people.

♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

ALEXANDER: When I met him, I honestly thought

he was the smartest person I had ever met.

To all of my other brilliant friends, I am sorry. (LAUGHS)

There was just a way that his mind took things

and processed them.

That his curiosity was probing and deep and relentless.

So, I knew that whatever he wanted to do,

um, that he could do.

MARTY NESBITT: I was out in the front yard raking leaves,

and he drove by, he stopped, and he said, "Oh, you know what?

You don't have my book, you ought to read my book."

He didn't say, you know-- He didn't give me

any context around it or anything.

I didn't know anything about him

other than that we would play ball together

and he was married to Michelle. And I started to read it,

and I opened the door and I called my wife

and I said, "Anita...

Barack is an incredible writer.

And he's really smart." (CHUCKLES SOFTLY)

DAVID AXELROD: I met Barack Obama

as a favor to a friend.

She said, "I know this sounds crazy,

but I think he could be the first, uh,

first Black president of the United States."

And I thought, "Well, that was pretty grandiose."

I sat down with him,

and while I didn't necessarily walk away

humming hail to the chief,

it was an interesting conversation.

I didn't know exactly what his plans were,

but I knew that he was learning the system.

Because we weren't actually sitting at that table

where the power was, I think at some point,

he realized that he needed to be at the table.

Chicago was a hotbed

of political progressive politics.

And I think he was inspired by that.

We lived in the same area of Chicago,

and I would see him a lot.

I thought he was a nice-looking young man, pleasant.

Then all of a sudden, I heard that he was running

for the state senate spot.

OBAMA: You know, I-- I wasn't really focused

on running for office, per se.

I think, I've been continually experimenting

with, uh, ways to bring about change.

I tried community organizing,

I've worked as a civil rights attorney.

And the idea of participating in the legislative process

became more interesting the more I saw the limits

of social change through the courts.

And then what happened was a vacancy came up

in the state senate seat in the district where I live.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

WASHINGTON: Alice Palmer, a long-time revered

South Side state senator,

had decided that she wanted to run for higher office

for a congressional seat.

-I'm Alice Palmer, how are you? -ATTENDEE: How are you?

Fine, thank you.

WASHINGTON: She had promised him that she would support him.

Well, she lost the primary, so she wanted her seat back.

She wanted Obama to step back,

and he was not going to step back.

They'd made a deal.

There was a lot of anger and tension

and division in the community about that,

because in the African American community,

politicians believe that you should always wait your turn...

and many voters feel that way too.

BOBBY RUSH: I think Obama came to Chicago

with the thought and ambition of getting into politics.

WASHINGTON: He was extremely ambitious.

Nobody writes a book about their life

when they're 30 years old.

Unless he's got a plan.

OBAMA: It was when I started doing Project Vote in 1992

that I came to appreciate the need

for a more effective political movement

within the African American community.

I represent the children of the civil rights movement

who've had opportunities to study

and advance as a consequence

of the sacrifices that our parents made.

And that provides this generation

with special advantages...

but also special burdens

or responsibilities that, maybe, we haven't fulfilled yet.

VALERIE JARRETT: Barack Obama's mother's death

came quite suddenly.

Her cancer was quite aggressive,

and she wasn't expected to die as quickly as she did.

DAVID REMNICK: The compounding tragedy

was that he didn't make it in time to say goodbye.

He was involved with politics in such a way

that he felt he couldn't quite strip himself away

and he got there, you know, Hawaii's far, far away,

and he just got there-- got there late.

And then he spread her ashes in the Pacific Ocean

and that was that.

JARRETT: He was shocked by it. Devastated.

They were very close,

and I think he felt that his search

for his father perhaps overlooked

just how fundamentally important

his mother had been to his shaping.

OBAMA: She was, uh, just a wonderfully sweet spirit,

and, uh, somebody who was, at her core,

generous and thoughtful,

and somebody who, uh, rooted for the underdog, I think.

She ended up working as a, uh, development officer

for international aid organizations.

She had a terrific sense of empathy,

an ability to step in somebody else's shoes

and imagine how they might be feeling.

And I think that aspect of her is probably the thing

that was her greatest gift to me.

I think that my interest in public service

in part, you know,

grew out of those early lessons that she taught me.

And, uh, ultimately, I was elected as the state senator

for the 13th legislative district.

CLERK: We have Senate Bill 1645.

Madam Secretary, please read the bill.

SECRETARY: I move to concur with the House in the adoption

of their amendment number one to Senate Bill 1645.

Motion filed by Senator Obama.

The basic intent of this bill is to maintain the status quo

with respect to who qualifies

for time and a half overtime pay and who does not.

It is true and this was discussed in committee...

DAVID MARANISS: Barack's experience

as a state senator

is underappreciated in terms of his evolution.

Most ambitious politicians in Chicago

would take the route of going to the city council

and trying to become mayor and going through city politics.

But that's a hornet's nest.

He was able to sort of learn his way

through all of the dynamics of politics in Springfield.

OBAMA: By the time I arrived, you had a divided legislature,

and-- and discovered that most of my bills

were going to get killed before... (CHUCKLES SOFTLY)

...they had even been debated.

In fact, I remember the first time

I spoke on the floor of the senate.

One of my Republican colleagues came up to me

and said, "You know, Barack, that was a wonderful speech.

I think you changed a lot of minds,

but you changed no votes."

AXELROD: He came to talk to me about running for Congress.

He was in the state senate, he was restless, uh,

wanted to go to Washington.

And he thought that he could challenge Bobby Rush,

who was the sitting congressman of the district.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

AXELROD: Bobby in '99 had run for mayor of Chicago.

And got badly beaten.

And Obama sensed an opportunity,

felt he could contribute more.

REPORTER: State Senator Barack Obama

says the biggest issue

in the first district race is leadership.

This was Harold Washington's seat.

And, unfortunately, we have an incumbent who has not lived up

to that standard of leadership.

I mean, I'm thinking that Obama and I are buddies.

You know, we know each other.

We, uh, walked down the same walk.

We bopped to the same tune, all right?

And then all of a sudden, the guy challenges me,

you know, out of the blue!

(CROWD CHEERING)

RUSH: His biggest challenge is getting his name recognition up.

I maintain that I got great name recognition

because I'm an activist. I'm here.

FRED HAMPTON: Here's a man that represents the people.

Bad motherfucker. Bobby Rush.

(CROWD CHEERING)

Bobby Rush is a beloved man, was then, is still now.

A Black Panther.

A man who is closely connected to Fred Hampton,

a young revolutionary who lost his life in Chicago,

essentially set up and murdered by the FBI

and the local police.

They murdered Fred Hampton. Uh, they're out to murder me.

They-- It's like they'll murder anybody

that's Black in this country.

Bobby, what's the next move for you personally?

I haven't-- My-- I'm-- There's no "personally" anymore.

I'm a people's man, so I do whatever the people decide.

There's nothing personal about it whatsoever.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Thank you very much.

I represented street people, common people, poor people...

the hungry, the outcasts.

I know who I am.

I know where I-- I stand at with my community. All right?

They don't always say it right. Sometimes they call me Alabama.

-(CROWD LAUGHING) -They call me Yo Mama...

-(CROWD CHUCKLE) -...but it's Obama.

I was probably one of two Baptist pastors to endorse him

when he ran against Bobby Rush.

And, um, you know, the big thing with that was

that he wasn't Black enough.

♪ (INTENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

DYSON: Who are you?

You know, a lot of Black people, "This Ivy League person.

Who's your mama? Who's your daddy?

What's your background?

Uh, what's your weird way of talking?

What is that weird name you've got?

You're going to come in and challenge

our beloved Bobby Rush?"

This is viewed as a key leadership post

for the African American community.

And I think that what's more important

for the constituents of this district

is somebody who's accessible, somebody who's energetic,

and somebody who's got a vision for the future.

Look, man, I fed hungry children.

I put myself in the crosshairs of the police department

for my community.

I was on the right side of history.

So, when did that become old news,

and to who is it old news?

Hi, how are you? I'm running for Congress.

First Congressional District.

RUSH: It might not be relevant to you,

but it's certainly relevant to those people

who you're asking to vote against me.

Barack Obama, running for First Congressional District.

REPORTER: A still-hopeful Barack Obama

worked the room tonight greeting constituents

-with hugs and handshakes. -What's going on, man?

How you doing? Thanks for coming.

There is a-- a political structure

around any incumbent congressman,

uh, that is formidable.

I heard somebody was giving you a hard time.

REPORTER: Touted as a rising political star,

if he were to win this congressional race,

he'd be a spokesperson for African Americans

both locally and nationally.

Some say he appeals to a broader range of people,

and that works well in Congress.

Well, we've done a wonderful job in terms of putting, uh,

a message about a new politics out here.

We're very proud of that.

Uh, and we think that we really have something to build on

for the future...

How are you? Good to see you.

Well, he had credentials. Very impressive credentials.

But he didn't have community credibility.

He was a nice fellow

and he is a very impressive individual.

And, um, I-- I-- But I won. (CHUCKLES SOFTLY)

♪ (INTENSE MUSIC FADES) ♪

INTERVIEWER: People say the one political misstep

he made was running against Bobby Rush.

-Mm-hmm. -INTERVIEWER: There was a whole question of,

he-- he couldn't really relate to the Black community.

-He wasn't Black enough. -Mm-hmm.

INTERVIEWER: Did that raise any of these old struggles

that he'd had even as a teenager

-as to who he was? -No, I mean-- Right. He--

He grew out of that.

And when you grow up and you become an adult,

you realize that you are who you are

and people have to connect with that or not.

And when people bring that issue up,

my-- my sense is it's more their issue than it is his.

I've grown up in this community. I'm as Black as it gets.

I was born on the South Side,

I come from an, obviously, Black family,

we weren't rich, you know.

I'd put my Blackness up against anybody's Blackness

in this state, okay? And Barack is a Black man.

And he's done more in terms of meeting his commitments

and sticking his neck out for this community

than many people who criticize him.

And I can say that because I'm Black. (CHUCKLES)

My view has always been, Barack is who he is.

People need to see that,

and if they want him, they should vote for him.

If they don't, we move on.

I still have a certain level of cynicism about politics,

-but I believe in him. -(SENATORS APPLAUD)

He's done an outstanding job as a state senator.

He has lived out his values in that way,

and I'm proud of what he's done.

AXELROD: In the summer of 2002,

I got a call from State Senator Obama,

who told me that he wanted to run

for the United States Senate,

and it-- it was sort of an existential moment for him,

uh, because he had lost the race to Bobby Rush by some 30 points,

he was broke,

uh, and though he was widely admired,

he also was thought to be damaged political goods.

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

He said, "I told Michelle I've got one race left in me.

If it doesn't work out, I'll go out and make a living,

but I think I want to take a shot at this Senate seat."

WRIGHT: He came to talk to me about running.

He was having qualms. Why?

'Cause he might lose? No, because he might win.

And if he won, that would give him

even less time with Sasha and Malia.

One of his biggest joys in life

was putting them to bed at night.

They want a daddy, not a public figure.

I don't get any more joy than I do

when I'm, uh, when I'm playing with them

or just watching them.

You know, they're, uh, they're better than a movie.

We want a man like Barack Obama to be in office.

Uh, someone who's prepared, who's worked in the community,

who has integrity,

who's doing it for the right reason.

(ATTENDEES APPLAUDING)

MICHELLE OBAMA: I always say I take off my wife hat

and put on my citizen hat,

and say, "Well, if I weren't his wife,

would I want him to run?"

And the answer is absolutely yes.

JEFF BERKOWITZ: Let me turn to Laura Washington.

Let's play a little hardball, and you ask the first question.

WASHINGTON: Well, I'm wondering how he's gonna edge out Carol Moseley Braun.

How are you gonna convince her not to run,

and if she does run, how are you going to win

with two African Americans splitting a-- a good part

of both of your bases?

Well, there is no denying

that, uh, ethnicity plays a role in Democratic Party politics.

You know, I think that's inescapable.

Uh, I--

I don't think too much about the other candidate's potential,

uh, in the race. My job is to think about

how do I put together a team and a message

that effectively projects, uh,

why I think I'd make a good US senator.

♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I worked very hard in the Senate to produce for my entire state.

I thought I tried to do a good job...

but I didn't win re-election.

WASHINGTON: There were people that wanted Carol Moseley Braun

to run for Senate again. There were women in particular

who still wanted to see her back in office

and felt it was still her turn.

And Obama was not Carol Moseley Braun.

REPORTER: The latest on what's turning

into a very crowded race for the Senate.

And this would have represented going back.

PHIL PONCE: A few days ago, former US senator Carol Moseley Braun

said she would not try to get her old job back.

And that decision meant another Democrat

was in the race instead.

REPORTER: State Senator Barack Obama

is the second to make it official.

...that I will be a candidate

for the United States Senate in 2004.

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

REPORTER: The probable candidate to reckon with at this point

is investment banker Blair Hull,

who is reportedly willing to spend

up to 40 million dollars of his own fortune

to finance his Senate bid.

Do the other hopefuls have the resources

to bankroll their own races?

I certainly don't.

Thank you all!

REPORTER: In any case, it is a season of proclaiming,

even though the primary is more than 13 months

down the pipe.

-AXELROD: We cool? -CREW MEMBER: Mm-hmm.

AXELROD: Barack, let's start with the question

that you always say you get first, which is...

-Of course. -AXELROD: What's

-What's with the name? -(LAUGHS)

AXELROD: What's the deal with that name?

Uh... (LAUGHS) Let's start over.

AXELROD: This was the year after Osama bin Laden

took out the World Trade Center.

And there was this thought in the political community

that the name Barack Obama would not be sailable.

In fact, there was someone who suggested to him

that he run as Barry Obama,

which was his nickname when he was a kid.

He just laughed that off, and said, "Yeah, that's fine.

I know it probably tests better but my name's Barack.

That's how we're going to run."

OBAMA: When I was young, you know, there weren't that

many people with, uh, African names.

So, these days, you know,

there are Shaquilles and Maliks,

but, uh, there were only Toms and Joes, uh,

when I was growing up.

So, uh, my family actually called me "Barry"

up until my father passed away, uh, when I was, uh, 20.

And, uh, at that point, I--

I decided that I should use the name

that I was born with, and have used it ever since.

AXELROD: Out of respect?

Out of respect for my father, yeah.

Now, much-- much to the regret of political consultants.

-AXELROD: Exactly. -Yeah. (CHUCKLES)

Senator Barack Obama.

Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

Sorry to interrupt your meal.

TA-NEHISI COATES: When, in his book,

Barack Obama says, "You can't call me--

Don't call me Barry anymore." (LAUGHS) That's familiar.

That's familiar. I mean, a decision to say,

"I am Barack," you know what I mean?

You think about, like, Frederick Douglas, you know,

born Frederick Bailey, recreating himself.

Malcolm Little, you know, becoming Malcolm X.

You know, myself, you know, my own name... (LAUGHS)

...you know, is this attempt for Black folks

to, you know, sort of reclaim,

you know, some-- some sort of identity.

WASHINGTON: One of the interesting things

that I heard a lot about was, is he really Black?

And this was different from the "He's not Black enough."

I was hearing this from whites.

What makes him Black? His mother was white.

How does he get to be a Black guy,

and how does he get to be a Black senator

when he doesn't even really have an African American background?

I think it-- it said a lot about race in this country,

and the fact that, particularly whites,

didn't really understand our racial heritage.

Senator Obama, how does being biracial

influence the kinds of issues that matter to you?

Well, it-- You know, I--

One of the things I think that I've always felt

is that, uh, I-- I'm hopeful about America,

and although race I think is at the center

of the American dilemma, and it always has been,

I think that it's also our opportunity,

because I think America is-- is, by nature, a hybrid culture.

Everybody comes here. We all merge together.

We-- we fight, we struggle, we battle, but, ultimately,

there's some common good that binds us together.

And I think that I'm always very sensitive,

in the kinds of issues I work on,

to focus on, uh, those issues

that we all hold in common, issues of fairness, justice, uh,

the ability to-- to provide a better opportunity for our kids.

That's the kind of message, hopefully, that comes across

during my campaign.

REPORTER: The Illinois primary is less than two weeks away,

and campaigning is peaking.

REPORTER: Just how has a guy, who two months ago

garnered only 14 percent of the vote in the Democratic polls,

become a double-digit frontrunner?

Yeah. You're gonna win! We've gotta vote for you!

I know that my voters know my track record

and-- and my plans for Washington

because, uh, when your name is Barack Obama,

you don't get any free votes.

If Bush gets re-elected,

even if we've got a Democratic Senate,

then all we're gonna be able to do is play defense.

It's gonna be hard to play offense.

AXELROD: He had a young man who traveled with him

who called me from the road.

He was down in deep Southern Illinois,

closer to, uh, Little Rock than Chicago

in a small town in a VFW hall,

and the kid said, "Boy, it went over great."

Obama called me that night and I said,

"Gee, I-- I heard it went great."

I really appreciate it, thank you for taking the time.

It's very kind of you.

And he said, "Why do you sound so surprised?"

And I said, "I don't know,

a Black guy named Barack Obama from the South Side of Chicago.

I thought it might be a little challenging."

And he said, "No, no. You don't get it.

We'd talk about my grandfather who marched in Patton's army,

and my grandmother who was a Rosie the Riveter,

and we get along great."

PONCE: Mr. Obama, one of your supporters

has raised the concern that perhaps

you're not connecting with African American voters

as much as you should.

Well, look, the African American community isn't monolithic

any more than the white community

or Latino community or the Asian community is--

is monolithic, and I think that's a healthy thing.

That's a part of our democracy.

I-- I certainly don't think that I would want

to restrict my support to African Americans

any more than Dan would want to restrict, uh,

hi-- his support to whites.

Part of what I think makes the Democratic Party rich

is the fact that we have to build coalitions.

PONCE: Mr. Hull, you moved to Chicago in 1980, is that right?

MICHELE NORRIS: I was doing a story about Chicago

and the Democratic Party's ability to reach voters

through its messaging.

And I was calling around and I was saying,

"Who should I talk to?"

Several people said, "You need to talk to

this guy named Barack Obama."

And it was really interesting,

he was saying things that were in some ways

in line with the Democratic Party,

but he had a different way of thinking,

and he had a very expansive way of thinking.

And he was thinking that they needed--

they, the Democrats, um, and he, as a politician,

needed to try to message in a way

that reached all voters.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Today's newspaper right here. Obama wins the primary.

It is history today, right here, in today's newspaper.

-Read all about it! -Thank you, I appreciate it.

-Fantastic, brother, Keep going. -Thank you, thank you, thank you.

-Congratulations, Trinitarian! -Thank you so much. Hey, fellow Trinitarian.

Thank you very much.

MICHELLE OBAMA: There are many reasons why this election is important,

and unfortunately, one of them is that

there are no, uh, people of color

in the highest governing body in the land, and it's 2004.

And I don't think that anyone would think

that we would still be saying that

in this day and age.

He's gotten attention

because after winning the primary so soundly,

he could potentially be, you know,

the only African American candidate

in the United States Senate, and that's news.

That's huge!

I think the people of Illinois will make it happen.

-Good morning. How are you? -REPORTER: (SHOUTING) Wait!

This is a TV moment. What do you think?

Watch yourself. Watch yourself.

MICHELLE: He's focused on the issues

and he has been driven by a positive message of hope,

and the notion that people--

We are all connected in some way,

and I think that people want to hear that now.

Some of you may know that my first job

out of law school was directing a project called Project Vote.

You know, my first love is getting people

to participate in the political process

because all the other stuff we do is dependent on folks

being engaged and feeling a part,

and feeling that their participation

is actually going to make a difference.

If all of us keep our eye on the ball,

if all of us work hard between now and November 2nd,

I have no doubt John Kerry is gonna be the president,

John Edwards is gonna be the vice president,

and Barack Obama's gonna be the next US senator.

-So, thank you so much, guys. -(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

I appreciate it. Thank you.

I appreciate it.

After he won the primary, there was a fundraiser.

And John Kerry, who was poised to become

the Democratic nominee for President, came in to speak.

There were only two other speakers.

One was Rich Daley, the mayor of Chicago.

The other was Barack Obama.

And Obama gave a rousing speech.

(SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)

AXELROD: In late June, we got a call

from the manager of the Kerry campaign...

and she said, "We'd like you to be the keynote speaker

at the Democratic Convention."

He said, "I'd be honored."

And as soon as he hung up, he said,

"I know what I want to say."

It's good to see you. How are you?

AXELROD: And, for the next few weeks

as he drove around campaigning

or was at the state senate in between votes,

he'd be scribbling notes down.

One day this fax came, and it was the draft.

And, I read the first page, and handed it to my wife.

I read the second page and handed it to my--

By the third page, I-- I just turned to her

and I said, "This is going to be one

of the great convention speeches of all time."

(MALIA OBAMA SCREAMING)

BRIAN WILLIAMS: The Democratic Party today

made it clear they think they have discovered

the biggest potential political star of either party

to come out of Illinois since Abe Lincoln.

His name is Barack Obama, and he's running for US Senate.

The party announced today

he'll be the keynote speaker at their Boston convention.

REPORTER: Democrats could have picked someone more famous,

but the pros saw something special

in Barack Obama.

MICHELLE: Barack's candidacy isn't just energizing

the Democratic Party, but it's energizing people

and giving them a renewed hope for politics, period.

OBAMA: How are you? Nice to meet you.

MICHELLE: You know, they're tired of a politics of division,

so it's very uplifting to see this wonderful young man

who reminds so many people of their own sons and grandsons

regardless of race.

(MALIA LAUGHS)

TIM RUSSERT: Do you think the Democratic Party

selected you in part because they wanted to present

an African American, young, rising politician?

Well, I-- I think that John Kerry cares a lot

about diversity in the party.

And I think that certainly made a difference.

I also think that the manner in which we won

our primary in Illinois was a hopeful sign,

because the conventional wisdom

was that, uh, I would get the Black vote

and then a sliver of, uh, a white vote,

and instead we won in places people didn't expect us to win,

in-- in suburban areas, in rural areas.

And it indicates that people are really ready

for a message for change.

What they want is somebody who has a positive message,

who has a tone in their politics that says,

"We can disagree with the other side

without being disagreeable."

And I think that's the kind of message

that John Kerry is going to be projecting

at the convention during this week.

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

AL SHARPTON: The, uh, Black caucus of delegates

to the 2004 Democratic Convention

had their sessions, and they invited me to speak

'cause I was one of the candidates for president that year.

And they invited Mr. Obama.

And he says, "I just want to explain to you, Reverend,

that, uh, you know, I'm doing the keynote tomorrow night,

and I'm probably gonna be more expansive

and unifying, uh, than, uh, a lot of people

are-- are used to."

And I stopped him then and said, "Don't worry, Senator,

you do what you have to do tomorrow night

'cause you have to win for the US Senate.

I'm gonna take care of the brothers and sisters tonight."

And he kind of looked at me

the way he kind of looks his head and he laughed.

And I think that began a relationship

where he and I understood, uh, that we play different roles.

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Let me express my deepest gratitude

for the privilege of addressing this convention.

Tonight is a particular honor for me

because, let's face it, my presence on this stage

is pretty unlikely.

JELANI COBB: When I first saw Barack Obama, I was skeptical.

And my introduction to him was like very many people's introduction,

the 2004 Democratic National Convention

where he gave the keynote speech.

But I was intrigued, even as I was skeptical.

OBAMA: I stand here knowing that my story

is part of the larger American story,

that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me,

and that, in no other country on Earth,

-is my story even possible. -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

AXELROD: We wanted to create a movement that inspired people

to believe that we could overcome

some of these really, uh, great barriers in our politics.

That we could overcome the cynicism.

You know, I thought that this speech

was going to have a galvanic effect for Obama.

Didn't realize how much until I was in the room in Boston.

This year, in this election,

we are called to reaffirm our values and our commitments,

to hold them against a hard reality

and see how we are measuring up, to the legacy of our forbearers,

and the promise of future generations.

And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents,

I say to you tonight, we have more work to do.

SHARPTON: I was sitting up in one of the box seats,

and I had some activists with me.

And they were like, "Well, why isn't he talking

about voting rights,

and why isn't he talking about some of our issues?"

John Kerry believes in America.

And he knows that it's not enough

for just some of us to prosper.

I understood that he had to deal

with a broad range of issues,

and that he was running for the US Senate

to represent everybody in Illinois.

If there is a child on the South Side of Chicago

who can't read, that matters to me,

even if it's not my child.

SHARPTON: And I actually got into arguments defending him.

I would say, "Wait a minute. We-- we cannot fight

to get our best to the mainstream,

and then tell them, 'Don't talk to the mainstream

about mainstream issues.'"

OBAMA: It is that fundamental belief,

I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper,

that makes this country work.

It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams,

and yet still come together as one American family.

E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

It's his position. As an American politician,

his goal is to represent the best interest

of the entire nation from a particular position

and standpoint as a Black man, but broadening out,

not only what that Blackness might mean,

but how it might also encompass and include all of America.

Now, even as we speak,

there are those who are preparing to divide us.

The spin masters, the negative ad peddlers,

who embrace the politics of anything goes.

Well, I say to them tonight,

there is not a liberal America and a conservative America,

there is the United States of America.

(CROWD CHEERING)

There is not a Black America and a white America

and Latino America and Asian America,

there's the United States of America.

(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: The pundits, the pundits like to slice...

COBB: You know, he made that statement,

"There's not a Black America or a white America,

there's the United States of America."

Now, that's not true.

There's totally a Black America and a white America.

And there's a Latino America,

a gay America, a poor America,

uh, there's a America that is disproportionately incarcerated,

there are all of those things.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance

to the stars and stripes,

all of us defending the United States of America.

COBB: But you also had to understand

that he was speaking aspirationally...

that people wanted to belong to a country

in which those were not permanent

and impermeable distinctions.

(CROWD CHEERING)

In the end--

In the end, that's what this election is about.

Do we participate in a politics of cynicism,

or do we participate in a politics of hope?

CROWD: Hope!

I don't think Obama had any illusion

that everybody had transcended race

and had transcended historical animosities

and all the rest,

and everybody was in full embrace of great unity.

It was a new kind of American optimism.

Voiced by somebody who embodied this melding of identity.

It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire

singing freedom songs,

the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores,

the hope of a young naval lieutenant

bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta,

the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds,

the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name

who believes that America has a place for him too.

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

DYSON: I was there at the convention,

and it was riveting, electrifying.

It was comparable to King standing

at the summit of expectation in 1963,

where he identifies a golden thread

of the American dream and weaves it into a tapestry

of American democratic possibility.

Hope.

Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty.

The audacity of hope.

In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us.

The bedrock of this nation.

Now, I'm not saying that the 2004 speech

measured up to the "I Have a Dream" speech

in terms of rhetorical eloquence,

though it was eloquent.

Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -OBAMA: Thank you.

DYSON: But it did have an electrifying effect

in that same way.

That was a tremendous coming out party for Barack Obama.

-OBAMA: Thank you. -(CROWD CHEERING)

PANELIST: Barack Obama.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, this is why you go into this business,

to watch a speech like that.

RICHARD SMITH: He's the only speaker

who's come to this convention without any expectation

because people didn't know him, and boy, they know him now.

PANELIST: This is a guy who transcends labels,

um, clichés, racial, ideological, cultural.

He mixed it all up, he reinvented it,

he gave us a whole new vision of the United States.

-SMITH: Yeah. -PANELIST: This guy's going places.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -♪ (TRIUMPHANT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Six hundred... and fifty-six days ago...

I announced in a room a little smaller than this--

(CROWD LAUGHING)

All right, it was a lot smaller.

That I was announcing for the United States Senate.

And at the time, as many of you know...

people were respectful, but nevertheless skeptical.

They felt that in a nation as divided as ours,

there was no possibility that someone who looked like me

could ever aspire to the United States Senate.

They felt that in a fearful nation,

someone named "Barack Obama"

could never hope to win an election.

And yet, here we stand

because we had a different concept,

a different notion of the American people.

And for those skeptics,

I say to them, look at this crowd tonight.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -Look at this election today.

And I have three words for them!

-What are those words? -ALL: Yes we can!

Thank you, Illinois, I love you! Thank you!

Hey, guys!

ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Good morning, everyone,

and I thank you for joining us today

as we stand here in the midst, once again,

of a very historic election.

(REPORTERS CLAMORING)

CUMMINGS: I'm extremely excited to welcome

Senator-elect Barack Obama

to the Congressional Black Caucus.

Only the third African American since Reconstruction

to be elected to the United States Senate.

REPORTER: This is such a historic race. Any pressure?

Well, you know, I don't feel pressure

in the sense that, uh, most of the issues that I'm concerned about

are issues that the African American community is concerned about.

But when it comes to speaking out on issues

that are of particular importance

to the African American community,

I don't think that's a conflict with my role

as a, uh, effective legislator for the people of Illinois.

(REPORTERS CHATTERING)

INTERVIEWER: The expectations are so high for you.

How do you possibly meet those expectations?

Well, I don't think that anybody expects me, realistically,

to single-handedly transform politics in America,

certainly not before I'm sworn in.

DICK CHENEY: ...that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same...

GEORGE W. BUSH: I think it's important

as we head into a new session to confront problems...

to not pass them on to future congresses

or a future president.

And so, I want to confront problems,

and I will. I'll call upon Congress

to take on... big issues.

And I look forward to working with members

of both parties to do just that.

Am I making a right or a left here?

AXELROD: For the first year of his Senate tenure,

we really tried to be very low key

for two reasons.

We didn't want to signal to the people of Illinois

that somehow Obama was using Illinois

as a stepping-stone to something else.

And-- and that wasn't his intent.

We also didn't want to aggravate his colleagues

who were naturally resentful of all the attention.

He could've done a Sunday show every week.

And then in late 2005, Katrina happened.

REMNICK: In August 2005, the Gulf is underwater.

New Orleans is underwater.

And it is very evident that not only

are the preparations for this abysmal,

but the racial disparity in the way people were treated

and cared for was appalling.

And the indifference from Washington

and other levels of government was appalling.

INTERVIEWEE: They told us, "Go to the Superdome.

If you want to be rescued, go to the Superdome."

All of a sudden, now they're telling us, "Go to the bridge."

We all have very few resources. What are we supposed to do?

REPORTER: When asked if race played a role in his response,

the president had a stern answer.

My attitude is this, the storm didn't discriminate

and neither will the recovery effort.

DYSON: President George Bush said that the storm

was indifferent to race.

But people who could afford to live higher

and better were not as vulnerable

to those who were more in the storm's path.

So, where you lived in the storm's path

was determined by pre-existing economic condition.

COBB: What do you do when you see

the richest nation in the world

and there are hundreds and hundreds

of dead Black people floating in the streets?

And the government, alternately, saying

that it's powerless to intervene in any way

that would save these people's lives.

This was a visual reminder of the disposability

of Black people's lives in the United States.

Especially poor people.

The important thing for us now is to recognize that

we have situations in America

in which race continues to play a part,

that class continues to play a part,

and when disaster strikes, it tears the curtain away

from the festering problems that we have beneath them.

And Black and white, all of us should be concerned.

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

COBB: For, I think, a lot of African Americans,

Hurricane Katrina was like 9/11

in terms of shaking the foundations

of their relationship to this country.

I think that was probably central

to the narrative that wound up ultimately giving

Barack Obama an opportunity

to run for president of the United States.

Hi, how are you? Good to see you.

-How've you been? Happy new year to you. -Hi. Happy New Year.

Throughout 2006, the drumbeat was building for him

to become a candidate for president.

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

AXELROD: We postponed a trip to Africa

because he was trying to keep a lower profile.

Finally, in the summer of 2006, he went.

(PEOPLE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

(OVERLAPPING CHATTER)

OBAMA: I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

and so I wanted to make sure that I was getting information

that would help me do my job better as a US senator.

-We're really grateful. -Yeah, thank you.

-Nice to see you. -Best of luck to you guys.

-Thank you very much. -Good. Good.

OBAMA: I think I can be helpful in putting a different face

on US foreign policy and the US government.

My wife and I are going to get tested for HIV/AIDS.

So I just want everybody to remember

that if a US senator can get tested,

then everybody in this crowd can get tested.

And everybody in this city can get tested

because you need to know your status.

(CROWD CHEERING)

I have stopped expecting things in my life

as the wife of Senator Barack Obama

because everything is a surprise.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -See you, guys.

MICHELLE: But it was completely overwhelming

to see hundreds and hundreds

and thousands and thousands of people

just lining the streets cheering this man, my husband.

It's sort of like, "Do you-- you know him?" (CHUCKLES)

LEADER: (SINGING) ♪ Senator Obama! ♪

ALL: (SINGING) ♪ Senator Obama... ♪

SUPPORTER: His coming here is a message,

not only to us, it's an inspiration,

-but to the entire world. -(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: Who's the artist? Who made it?

-CROWD MEMBER: Who made it? -OBAMA: This guy?

-Yeah. -OBAMA: Hey!

-This is a beautiful gift. -Thank you.

-Thank you so much. -Welcome.

OBAMA: This is beautiful! Yeah!

Except I think he's-- he looks better-looking than I am.

(CROWD LAUGHING)

Come here! Come, come, come, come.

My sense is that,

as I talk to individual Africans,

their appreciation of someone with my background

being able to rise up and have some influence

over the course of events in the United States

was impressive for them.

Once we got to my father's compound,

there wasn't much room for family visitation...

and I think it was a little overwhelming for my grandmother.

OBAMA: Auma, just-- just, uh, come and translate for Granny.

AUMA: Okay.

REPORTER: How does she feel...

-(CROWD HUSHING) -...to have the man she raised's son here again?

(SPEAKING LUO)

(SPEAKING LUO)

She said she feels very, very good.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

That's it. That's a soundbite right there.

(LAUGHS) We're not wasting any time.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -AUMA: He's not all ours.

The last time he was here,

you know, it was all about family,

it was all about visiting us.

REPORTER: Senator, coming back 14 years later...

AUMA: And now, we have quite limited time with him.

This time around, we really are just there to support him.

OBAMA: The first time I came here...

He's-- he's on official business and it's very, very obvious.

I didn't expect the attention to be that great, nationally.

Because, I mean, he's on the national news

more than the president is at the moment.

He's very big, and I didn't realize that.

I didn't realize how-- how important he's become.

(CROWD CHEERS)

OBAMA: (OVER PA) I'm having a wonderful time in Kenya.

All of you are my brothers, all of you are my sisters.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -I want to thank everybody here!

AUMA: And as his sister, to be honest, it's very worrying

because I think at the end of the day,

it's a lot to put on the shoulders of one person.

And he's really quite a young politician.

(INDISTINCT CHATTERING, SHOUTING)

OBAMA: Hopefully, what is taken away

by, uh, Africans who met me is that...

(CHEERING)

...an effective country

is not going to be based on tribe,

it's not going to be based on an ethnic majority

imposing its will.

But it's going to be based on a credo

that says every individual,

regardless of their background...

should have equal rights and equal opportunity.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

OBAMA: I want to say to everybody,

thank you, I appreciate you,

and I look forward to coming back soon.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER, SHOUTING)

AXELROD: The reaction to him there was so kinetic...

and really signaled that this guy

was a-- a globally important leader.

I-- I said to the senator, "He can't-- can't be a senator.

I mean, who's this-- who's this young boy?"

-And, uh... -(BOTH LAUGH)

But we're very, very impressed with you.

You're-- you're going to be a very credible,

-uh, presidential candidate. -Wow.

(LAUGHS)

-No, don't get me into trouble there with the... -He's-- he's-- he's--

he's-- he's-- he's shy.

(BOTH LAUGH)

It became clearer and clearer that he was going to have

to take a look at running for president

and that he may be interested in running for president.

Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer

had called him into Reid's office

to say, "You really ought to think about running."

Which shocked Obama,

that the Senate leaders would take that step to encourage him.

And he said, "You know, I-- I gotta think about this."

-RESIDENT: Welcome to Iowa. -Thank you, I appreciate it.

-Did you guys practice that? -(ALL LAUGH)

AXELROD: He went and spoke at the Harkins Steak-Fry,

which was an iconic event.

It was a gathering place for Democrats

and a trial setting for all

Democratic presidential candidates.

And Obama took that place by storm.

Right now, I'm focused on '06,

and we're gonna get all these Democrats elected.

SUPPORTER: Yes. That's exactly right.

And then after the election, you know,

we're gonna then think about '08. All right?

SUPPORTER 2: And it's gonna take groups like...

JOHN LEWIS: I invited him to come to Atlanta.

We walked downtown Atlanta from my office for lunch.

And along the way people kept saying,

"Mr. Obama, are you going to run?

Are you going to run?"

And he just sort of, uh, said, "Oh, maybe. I don't know."

He took a seat in the little restaurant...

and the waiters and waitresses,

other people just kept coming up to him.

They said, "Run, Mr. Obama. Run. Run."

I was sitting in my office, and he came in unannounced, um...

White Sox cap on, blue jeans.

I-- I think most people in the office

didn't even see him passing through.

And he plopped down in a chair and said,

"You know, I'm close to making a decision to do this."

I told him, "My concern for you, Barack,

is not that you're gonna lose. It's that you're gonna win."

♪ (THEME MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

BARACK OBAMA: I stand before you today

to announce my candidacy for President

of the United States of America.

(CROWD CHEERS)

SPEAKER: Early in the campaign,

Black people were feeling somewhat neglected.

Is he going to represent us? Is he going to take our issues seriously?

People felt he wasn't Black enough.

DAVID AXELROD: McCain's crowds turned uglier.

OBAMA: The discussion of race in this campaign

has taken a particularly divisive turn.

This is not a man who sees America

the way that you and I see America!

(CROWD CHEERS)

A Black man from Kenya

and a white woman from Kansas,

and in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

I was interested in issues of social change,

and I tried community organizing.

I worked as a civil rights attorney.

I've been continually experimenting

with ways to bring about change.

He was restless, he was broke.

Wanted to go to Washington.

BOBBY RUSH: Well, he had credentials,

but didn't have community credibility.

MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Who are you?

You know, a lot of Black people, "This Ivy League person.

Who's ya mama? Who's ya daddy? What's your background?"

JELANI COBB: Where I first saw Barack Obama

was the 2004 Democratic National Convention

where he gave the keynote speech.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America.

There is the United States of America.

That was a tremendous coming out party for Barack Obama.

DAVID AXELROD: It became clearer that he might be interested

in running for president.

I told him my concern for you, Barack,

is not that you're gonna lose, it's that you're gonna win.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, you're rolling?

You, uh-- Obviously, you put a lot of thought

into, uh, the decision to do this.

Have you given thought to, when you're successful,

what would you want people to say...

-Yeah. -...about how America

was different than the day you walked in the door?

Well, I-- I don't think that we're going to solve

all of our problems in eight years,

uh, or ten years.

You know, one of the things about life,

both for each of us and for the country as a whole,

is that there're always going to be new challenges.

There are always going to be new difficulties.

But I hope that at the end of an Obama administration,

people will look back and say "We changed our politics," uh,

so that people could take pride in their government again

and could feel that the government

was working for the people and not just for the few.

That, at the end of an Obama administration,

this country's a little more fair,

and a little more just.

That our economy is a little more balanced

and that people have a-- a slightly better chance

of achieving the American dream.

And if we set this country on the right trajectory now,

then we-- we won't have solved every problem,

but we will have laid the foundation

for future generations to continue

what's been this great experiment in democracy.

♪ (THEME MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

BARACK OBAMA: So this is the Old State Capitol.

REPORTER: One thing you can say with certainty

about Barack Obama is that there has never been

another presidential candidate like him.

He is ambitious and just daring enough

to invite comparisons to one of the few American presidents

who was elected with even less political experience

than he has.

STEVE KROFT: Three years ago, you were a state legislator

here in Springfield.

What makes you think that you're qualified

to be president of the United States?

It-- You know, I think we're in a moment of history

where... probably the most important thing

we need to do is to bring the country together.

-Nice to meet you. Hi. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

OBAMA: And, one of the skills that I bring to bear

is being able to pull together

the different strands of American life

and focus on what we have in common.

Hi, how are you?

-I'm Hillary Clinton... -(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER 2: Senator Hillary Clinton has burst

onto the campaign field.

I'm running for president, and I'm in it to win it

-with your help! -(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER 3: A recent CBS news poll shows

that Black voters, who could provide the key

to winning early Democratic primaries,

are weary of Obama.

How important is race in defining yourself?

I am rooted in the African American community,

-but I'm not defined by it. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

OBAMA: I am comfortable in my racial identity,

but, uh, that's not all I am.

REPORTER 3: The stage is set for tomorrow's announcement.

Senator Barack Obama will make it official.

He is in this race for president.

And while he has never positioned himself

as "the Black candidate"...

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -...the question of his race

is, of course, and will continue to be much discussed

and debated, especially among African Americans.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -KROFT: You think the country is ready

-for a Black president? -Yes.

You don't think it's going to hold you back?

Well-- No. You know, the--

I think i-- if I don't win this race, uh,

it will be because of other factors.

It's-- It's going to be because I have not shown

to the American people

a vision for where the country needs to go

that, uh, that they can embrace.

JEREMIAH WRIGHT: I was scheduled the next morning

to be in Springfield.

Due to the implication, Senator Obama called me.

He called me three times that day.

He was very worried about my prayer. (CHUCKLES)

And I said, "Why?"

He said, "You know, I go to Iowa the next day,

don't say anything in your prayer

that's gonna upset farmers."

And I said, man, I'm the one talking about

how you brought Southern Illinois together

to stop distrusting and mistrusting Chicago.

I wouldn't do that in a prayer.

He called back, "David's worried." Axelrod.

"David's worried. Are you-- Are you sure?"

I said, "I'm straight."

The third call, he said, "Rev...

Rolling Stone has got their hands

on one of your sermons...

and David feels that if I take you out

on the stage with me

to open up the ceremony with a prayer,

the press will only focus on you.

You know, you can be over the top sometimes."

I said, "What are you talking about?"

-♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

...oppressions.

JEREMIAH WRIGHT: I'm thinking, what have I done?

What have I said?

What sermon of mine have you heard

that's over the top?

Maybe we need to declare war on racism.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -WRIGHT: He said,

"I still want you to pray for me and my family.

Can you do that before I go out?"

I said, "Yes, I can do that."

He said, "I'll see you in the morning."

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

WRIGHT: I landed in Springfield.

There was a car waiting for me that took me to the Capitol.

We joined hands in a circle, and I prayed for the family,

I prayed for him,

I prayed a non-partisan prayer... (CHUCKLES)

...and asked that the candidate...

most dedicated to the principles of the founders

would be elected,

and that God would keep him and his family safe.

Secret Service then took Barack out to the platform.

I walked up with Michelle and stood next to her

as he announced.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -It was here in Springfield,

where North, South, East and West come together,

that I was reminded of the essential decency

of the American people.

Where I came to believe that through this decency,

we can build a more hopeful America.

And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol,

where Lincoln once called on a house divided

to stand together,

where common hopes and common dreams still live,

I stand before you today to announce

-my candidacy... -(CROWD CHEERING)

...for President of the United States of America.

AL SHARPTON: When he made the announcement

that day in Illinois, at the same time in Virginia

there was a Black Agenda Conference.

That I was there.

SHARPTON: I wish, you know, all of this about,

uh-- uh, our friend, Barack, announcing today,

I wish Obama had announced here.

-Because Lincoln-- -(CROWD CHEERING)

Lincoln did not free us,

the abolitionist movement freed us.

And I was not yet there supporting him.

We've got to quit giving the wrong people credit

for our history.

(CROWD CHEERING)

MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Black leaders were kind of resentful

'cause he kind of did an inrun

around Black leadership.

Most Black people who rise in Black communities

have to come through and kiss the ring

of the Black political dignitaries and potentates.

-Obama leap frogged over them. -(CROWD CHEERING)

By ourselves, this change will not happen.

Divided, we are bound to fail.

But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer

tells us that a different future is possible.

(CROWD CHEERING)

CORNEL WEST: He makes the announcement at Springfield,

tied to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln,

which is a rich one. So, we-- we understood--

Okay, I mean, political calculation,

every politician has to do that.

And you don't want to alienate your white fellow citizens

-coming out of the box. -(CROWD CHEERING)

He tells us that there is power in words.

He tells us that there's power in conviction.

That beneath all the differences of race and region,

faith and station we are one people.

WEST: He's got large numbers of white brothers and sisters

who have fears and anxieties,

and he's got to speak to them in such a way

that he holds us at arm's length enough to say he loves us,

but doesn't get too close to scare them off.

-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) -So, he's walking this tightrope.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -I want us to take up

the unfinished business of perfecting our union

and building a better America!

I'm not for or against him as a brother,

if there's any white supremacist perception

of Barack, I defend him. Why? 'Cause I hate white supremacy.

But he's gotta be accountable.

And starting off in Springfield, Illinois,

is not impressive to me.

-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) -Hey.

He called me up. He said "Professor West,

I-- I heard what you said about my speech,

why did you say it?" I said, I said it because I believed it.

(CROWD CHEERING)

WEST: He said "I was wondering whether you would work with me?"

I said, "I've got one question.

What is your relation to the legacy

-of Martin Luther King, Jr.?" -CROWD: Barack Obama!

WEST: "And how will your campaign

enact the struggle against poverty,

militarism, racism, and materialism?

Those are the evils that Martin Luther King, Jr. saw

right before he was murdered."

I can still sing "We Shall Overcome!"

We shall overcome because the arc

of the moral universe is long

-but it bends towards justice. -...bends towards justice.

-It bends towards justice. -(CROWD CHEERING)

WEST: He was very honest with me and he said,

"Professor West, you know that I'm-- I'm not as radical as you are,

but I do see myself directly connected

to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr."

I said, "That sounds wonderful to me."

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

-Hillary! -(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER: Forty-two years ago, it would have been unimaginable.

Two Democratic presidential contenders,

one a woman, another an African American,

courting Black voters in Alabama,

preaching to overflowing churches.

Are you ready to march?

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

DAVID REMNICK: Every year,

there's a commemoration of Selma,

a great encounter between the forces

of the civil rights movement led by John Lewis and others...

-(INDISTINCT CLAMOR) -...and police with truncheons.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

REMNICK: And Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

want to make an impression in Selma.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

REPORTER: Many black voters say they're torn

between voting for the African American, Obama,

-or sticking with the Clintons... -(CROWD CHEERING)

...who've supported civil rights for years.

That's the agonizing choice for John Lewis,

bludgeoned during the Selma March,

and now a congressman.

It was tough, it was very-- It was tough.

I supported, uh, President Clinton

and got to know Hillary.

It was one of the tough decisions

of my political life.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

REMNICK: The Clintons felt that they had deep inroads

with the African American community and with-- with reason.

You'll remember in the-- in a certain New Yorker magazine,

Toni Morrison wrote that Bill Clinton

was the first Black president, said with some irony,

said with all kinds of... But mostly with admiration too.

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

REMNICK: Obama gives his speech at Brown Church.

And Hillary is down the street at another church.

Yes, that long march to freedom

that began here has carried us a mighty long way.

It's-- It's a contest.

-Thank you, thank you. -(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

Oh, giving all praise and honor to God...

-CROWD: Amen! -...for bringing us here today.

I just want to talk a little bit about... Moses,

and Aaron and Joshua...

because we are in the presence today...

-of a lot of Moseses. -ATTENDEE: A lot.

Uh, we're in the presence today of giants...

whose shoulders we stand on.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

REMNICK: He begins paying tribute

to what he calls the "Moses generation."

Who's Moses?

Martin Luther King, who did not see--

Famously says it in his speech,

"I might not get there with you."

As great as Moses was...

despite all that he did...

leading a people out of bondage...

he didn't cross over the river to see the Promised Land.

God told him, "Your job is done.

We're going to leave it to the Joshua generation...

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -...to make sure it happens.

There are still some battles that need to be fought.

Some rivers that need to be crossed."

Obama pronounces himself

the head of the Joshua generation.

S-- That's incredibly nervy.

Moses told the Joshua generation,

"Don't forget where you came from."

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

And I worry sometimes that the Joshua generation

in its success forgets where it came from.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Thinks it doesn't have to make as many sacrifices.

SHERRILYN IFILL: You think people in the 1940s

and 1950s woke up and said,

"We are the civil rights generation, let's do this,"

as though it was, you know, fantastic?

Our nostalgia has made us look back

at that period of time as though it was great,

but it was not great getting hit in the head

on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

These weren't fun times.

These were times of commitment, when people decided

that they weren't gonna take it anymore

and that they could make this country better.

OBAMA: Folks complaining about the quality of our government,

I understand there's something to be complaining about.

-(CROWD CHUCKLING) -I'm in Washington.

I see what's going on.

It means we can't sit out elections.

It means we can't just vote for people

and then not show up to hold them accountable.

It means we can't think that government

-is something other people do. -But I'll tell you what.

I also know that, if cousin Pookie would vote...

(CROWD CHEERING)

...and... if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch

-and stop watching SportsCenter... -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

...and go register some folks and go to the polls,

we might have a different kind of politics.

That's what the Moses generation teaches us.

Kick off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -Go do some politics.

Change this country!

That's what they teach.

To me, that event is as much his declaration

to run for president...

as his announcement speech in Springfield...

but it's made particular to the Black community.

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

SPEAKER: You got my vote. You got my vote, man.

SPEAKER: He got my vote. You got my vote. You got my vote.

Hey, I appreciate that.

I think that there is a assumption

on the part of some commentators

that somehow, the Black community

i-- is so unsophisticated

that the minute you put an African American face

up on the screen, that they automatically say,

"That's our guy."

-I wanted to say hello. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

OBAMA: A Black candidate has to earn Black votes

the same way that he's gotta earn white votes.

Uh, and-- and that's exactly how it should be.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

People were asking me, "Who you gonna support?"

And I said that, "Well, everybody

that's my color is not my kind."

I bring you the senator from Illinois,

-Senator Barack Obama. -(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

SHARPTON: He had always said to me,

"I'm not asking you to support me,

-just don't hurt me." -Thank you!

There was concern. Is he going to represent us?

Is he going to take our issues seriously.

What does he know about us? Who-- We don't really know him.

I am proud to be a candidate

for the presidency of the United States of America.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -DYSON: And Black people are practical,

we're no longer interested in symbolic politics run

as a-- a reaction to white supremacy,

run as, you know, a-- a candidate who will protest.

No, we want real people who are able to really win.

-(CROWD APPLAUDING) -I am mindful

-that I wouldn't be here... -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

...if it had not been for Reverend Al Sharpton

-running for president... -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

...and Carol Moseley Braun running for president,

and Jesse Jackson running for president,

and Shirley Chisolm running for president.

My candidacy changes the present course

of our nation.

I got involved as a protest, really.

Resisting how liberals were taking us for granted

and dismissing us and marginalizing us

in the process.

And so one thing led to another.

I felt that we had the right to run

and the reason to run and the capacity

to take our case to the next level.

-Who would have thought? -ATTENDEE: I would.

DYSON: We love Jesse Jackson.

In '88 he really, what? Got seven million votes?

So that was tremendous.

After 38 contests...

I would be in front.

That's more than symbolic, that was substance

-but we need more of that. -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

I sense all across America a desire for something new,

-a desire to turn the page... -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

...a desire to write a new chapter

in American history.

And if I have all of you working with me,

then I guarantee you

that not only will we win this election,

but we are also going to transform America.

Thank you very much!

I appreciate you guys, thank you!

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

SHARPTON: The more I talked to him, the more I felt

that Barack Obama was authentic,

because he wouldn't say to me what he knew I wanted to hear.

But he said to me what I needed to hear.

And that was, "I really do believe

we can make the country go forward,

and that our community can get what they want."

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

HOST: All right! We're ready, thank you.

-How's it going, Cedar Rapids? -(CROWD CONTINUE CHEERING)

Thank you! Thank you!

VALERIE JARRETT: Early in the campaign,

our strategy was all hands on deck in Iowa.

And the theory of the case was that if we can win Iowa,

then he would be credible.

Not just to people in white America

but also people in Black America,

who were hesitant about his chances of winning.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

-REPORTER: Is this fun to do? -I love doing this.

This-- This is what politics is all about.

Can I say hello?

-SPEAKER: Yeah. -SPEAKER 2: You sure can!

JARRETT: But that strategy came with a cost,

and the cost was Black people feeling somewhat neglected.

Now we came up with a magic solution,

which was we asked Michelle to go to South Carolina.

JELANI COBB: I don't think that any of us ever thought

that we would see a Black president in our lives.

I used to say that in 2007

there were only four people in the United States

who thought that it was possible

for a Black man to be elected president,

and they all lived at the same address

on the South Side of Chicago.

-Hi, how are you? -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

-I'm Michelle Obama. -Yes, ma'am.

Nice to see you.

DYSON: Black people were very skeptical.

Any Black man that rises, boy, it's gonna be tough,

and white folk are gonna be pissed,

and you gonna be vulnerable, and it might not work out.

MICHELLE OBAMA: Now I know folks talk in the barbershops

and beauty salons.

I've heard it myself. See people say, you know,

"That Barack Obama he's a nice guy,

but I'm not sure America's ready for a Black president."

She gave an extraordinary speech

that really spoke to the feelings

in the African American community,

the feelings of fear.

Of worrying, "Would he lose?" Worrying, "Would he be hurt?"

I know that people understand that Barack is special.

-(CROWD CHUCKLES) -You don't see

this kind of man often.

And I equate it to like, you know,

we all have that aunt,

that grandmother that bought all that new furniture?

Spend her life savings on it, and then what she do?

She puts plastic on it to protect it.

(CROWD LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)

JARRETT: Everyone in the audience,

which was comprised of primarily African American women,

all knew about their grandmother's couch.

I think folks just want to... protect us...

from the possibility of being let down.

(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)

Not by us, but by the world.

She gave them permission by acknowledging their fear,

but then said "Look, I have the most to lose."

If you're willing to heed Coretta Scott King's words

and not be afraid of the future, but have faith in God's grace,

then I truly believe that together,

there's no challenge that we can't overcome.

-Thank you. -(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

KROFT: There are African Americans

who don't think that you're Black enough,

who don't think that you have had the required experience.

The truth of the matter is, you know,

when I'm walking down the South Side of Chicago

and, uh, visiting my barbershop, and...

playing basketball in, uh, in some of these neighborhoods,

those aren't, uh, those aren't questions that I get asked.

ZARIFF: I didn't know he was this or that.

Normally when you come into a shop,

into Hyde Park Hair Salon, you're just-- you're yourself.

No titles.

There were some reporters in the shop at one point

during the campaign, and one of the reporters asked me,

"Oh, do you cut his hair to appear like he's white?"

I'm like, "Excuse me?"

I said, "How do you do that?"

That was my reply, but it stunned me.

It was unnecessary.

But it's necessary, I guess, for a lot of people.

(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER: Barack Obama has said that the big-city cab drivers

who once refused to pick him up

had no doubt about his Blackness back then,

nor should anyone else now.

But recent polls show Hillary Clinton

is the choice of more Black Democrats,

and it's clear that Obama's racial identity

gives pause to some.

SHARPTON: He was loudly condemned by some.

And in private even more loudly, "He wasn't Black enough.

He didn't have the slave experience."

-(CROWD CHEERING) -Thank you, Apollo!

COBB: There's always been a kind of heterogeneous idea

of like what it is to be Black in this country.

And so, what was more important than his name

or his lineage was his ability to culturally interact

on terms with African Americans.

(CROWD CHEERING)

COBB: One of the things the campaign did

in South Carolina was they released this DVD

of him going around and talking to voters.

-Retired Sergeant Major, sir. -Man, retired Sergeant Major.

-He still looks like a Sergeant Major. -(CROWD LAUGHING)

And there's one point where he goes into a barbershop

and he starts, uh, cracking on this guy's shoes.

-How you doing, President? -I'm doing good, man.

(LAUGHS)

And check out those shoes too.

Check 'em out.

-Man. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER, LAUGHTER)

You got some, you got some. What's that?

-I dunno-- -You got some alligator?

And that was just something

that only a person who was comfortable

-in this culture would do. -(CROWD CHEERING)

-Are you fired up? -CROWD: Fired up!

Are you ready to go?

REPORTER: Of course there are whites who will never vote for Obama

-because he is Black. -Let's go change the world.

I don't want to sound prejudiced or anything, but for one, um,

I'm not gonna...

I don't want to vote for a-- a colored man

-to be our president. -(BUS ENGINE REVVING)

REPORTER: Barack Obama's bus rode through rural Iowa Monday,

as he takes his message to small towns in the state.

We'll show that we value farming in this country

by launching a program that gives a hand

to the next generation of farmers

and helps them buy their first farms.

REPORTER 2: It's an interesting move

just two weeks before the caucus,

because rural Iowa is certainly not Obama's base.

The question is whether or not Obama can connect

with the primarily-white rural voters here.

VOTER: It's still my neighbors in small towns

who don't have jobs.

Uh, it's still people in my parish

who are struggling with retirement incomes,

and those are no different whether we live in Chicago

or-- or in, uh, Laurens, Iowa.

OBAMA: How many people here definitely plan

to caucus tomorrow? Raise your hands.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -That's what I'm talking about.

DAVID AXELROD: The campaign picked up momentum

over the course of the year in Iowa.

We knew that if we didn't win the Iowa caucuses we were done.

We had to-- We had to break through there.

REPORTER: Tonight, the Democratic front runners

are in a frantic drive to rally supporters

and win over converts.

REPORTER 2: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards

have been virtually tied

according to some of the late polling

going on surrounding this race.

REPORTER 3: And just so supporters know what's at stake...

Tomorrow night, the future of the free world

-is riding on your shoulders. -(CROWD LAUGHING)

-Don't feel any pressure. -(CROWD LAUGHING)

OFFICIAL: Thirty-one, 32, 33. Obama...

COBB: I was living in Atlanta and there was a watch party.

And I-- I don't think... very many people

really, really thought that he was going to win Iowa.

And then all of a sudden, he won Iowa.

(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: They said this country was too divided,

but on this January night,

at this defining moment in history,

you have done what the cynics said

-we couldn't do. -(CROWD CHEERING)

COBB: I remember like, leaving,

and there was a white guy wearing a t-shirt that said,

"He's Black, I'm proud."

And then right after that, I saw a t-shirt

that had Martin Luther King

and Barack Obama next to each other.

And then I saw that t-shirt everywhere

in the days that followed.

DYSON: After he won in Iowa,

Black people were like, "What's that? What's his name?

Barack Oberman? What's his name?

Yeah, let's we'll do-- Yeah, he's good!

-He's like really good." -(CROWD CHEERING)

DYSON: Hillary Clinton was darn near knighted

as the heir apparent.

It was her turn, she had waited as a woman in this country.

But Obama swooped right in

and figured out, now, it's kind of my time.

CROWD: Obama! Obama!

So he earned it, right, the old fashioned way.

Shoe leather, meeting people, winning at the polls,

and Black people were like, "This man could really win!"

-How's it going, New Hampshire? -(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER: He rocketed out of Iowa

and into New Hampshire

and this morning woke up to a poll

showing a comfortable lead here over Senator Clinton.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -REPORTER 2: In his stump speech,

he now says "we" instead of "I." The implication?

What happened in Iowa was the start of a movement.

REPORTER 3: Obama's victory has recast the Democratic race,

creating new pressure on Senator Hillary Clinton.

HILLARY CLINTON: I did very, very well with people over 45,

and I didn't do as well with people under 30.

And I take responsibility for that.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

REPORTER 4: The Obama crowds are large and energized,

they also tend to be young.

OBAMA: That's why you're here,

and in one day's time

-we can stand up for change... -(CROWD CHEERING)

...that all of us can believe in.

(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER 5: In another corner of the state,

a different side of Hillary Clinton.

You know, I have so many opportunities from this country.

I just don't want to see us fall backwards.

-No. So... -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

(CROWD CHEERING)

Thank you! (LAUGHS)

OBAMA: Well, first of all,

I want to congratulate Senator Clinton

on a hard-fought victory here in New Hampshire.

She did an outstanding job,

give her a big round of applause.

(CROWD CHEERING)

I want, especially, to thank New Hampshire.

Over the last week, I listened to you.

And in the process, I found my own voice.

(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER: New Hampshire voters have redefined the race

for The White House,

but what drove people to vote the way they did?

Even Hillary Clinton's own tracking poll

showed that she was going to lose big.

Something happened in that last 48 hours

that changed people's minds.

Hillary Clinton retooled her campaign a little bit.

Started getting out of the bubble,

started actually talking to voters,

answering all of their questions,

had an emotional moment, humanized herself.

Is it possible people lied to pollsters

saying they were going to vote for

for an African American candidate and then not?

I've gotten a number of emails now from people

in different campaigns, Democratic strategists,

other people out there saying, "Well, could it be a race?

Could it be a race? Could it be a race?"

(AIRPLANE ENGINE REVVING)

REPORTER 2: We turn next to the campaign trail.

The politics of race and possible trouble

for the Clinton campaign.

It involves comments Senator Clinton made

about Martin Luther King,

and something Bill Clinton said about Barack Obama.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -This whole thing

is the biggest fairy-tale I've ever seen.

REPORTER 3: Clinton said what he was describing

as a fairytale was the media portrayal

-of Obama's record on Iraq. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

REPORTER 4: As the Democratic campaign

moves forward, Hillary Clinton is backpedaling.

So, the Obama campaign is deliberately

-distorting this... -REPORTER 5: Today on Meet the Press,

she sought to blame Barack Obama for the firestorm caused

by a remark of hers in New Hampshire.

Dr. King's dream, uh, began to be realized

when President Lyndon Johnson passed

the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

REPORTER 5: She said she did not mean to belittle

Dr. King's accomplishments,

which is exactly how many African Americans took it.

REPORTER 2: Sources in the Obama campaign say

African American leaders are outraged

and believe the Clinton campaign is using racial code words.

REPORTER 6: His fairy-tale comment was all over talk radio,

and there was an email being sent around

with a detailed list of comments from the Clintons.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -REPORTER 6: All this led

experts to worry that this historic campaign

between a woman and an African American man

now threatens to divide Democrats along racial lines.

TIM RUSSERT: In terms of accountability, Senator Obama,

Senator Clinton on Sunday told me

that the Obama campaign had been pushing this story line.

And true enough, your Press Secretary

in South Carolina, four pages

of alleged comments made by the Clinton people

about the issue of race.

In hindsight, do you regret pushing this story?

Well, not only in hindsight, but, uh, going forward.

I think that our supporters, our staff get overzealous.

Uh, they start saying things that I would not say.

And it is my responsibility to make sure

that we're setting a clear tone in our campaign.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

AXELROD: South Carolina is the first southern primary.

It was a crucial primary for both us

and for Hillary Clinton.

The majority of voters who participate

in the Democratic primary there are African American...

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

...but Barack needed white votes as well and wanted them

because he didn't want to win on that basis.

I wanna be so persuasive that nobody leaves this room

thinking they should vote for anybody else.

(CROWD CHEERING)

I want everybody here to vote for Barack.

Everybody!

REPORTER: Barack Obama hit the lunch crowd

at a restaurant in Columbia,

where he greeted n early every customer.

Nearly all of them white.

Of course, we can take a picture, what's your name?

-Sean. -Sean.

REPORTER: Polls show he's been losing support

among white voters here,

and spent much of the week trying to downplay race.

He's blamed the media for hyping it,

and encouraged voters to look past color.

If I came to you and I had polka dots...

-but-- but you were convinced... -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

...that I was gonna put more money into your pockets,

and help you pay for college,

and help keep America safe, you'd say, "Okay.

You know, I-- I wish he didn't have polka dots,

-but I'm still voting for him." -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

COBB: Partly out of curiosity,

and partly out of legitimate support,

I decided that I was going to go to South Carolina.

We are in this place, Denmark, South Carolina,

on the Get Out the Vote operation.

We walk up to this house,

and this older white woman comes to the door

and tells me not to come any closer.

And I said, "Okay." And, you know, I stopped where I was

and she said, "I already know the date and I know the time,

I'm going to be right there to vote for Senator Obama."

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

REPORTER: All the signs have been positive.

Encouraging polls, the big crowds,

the confident campaign,

but Obama has seen this before in New Hampshire.

Who can you trust to be there for you in sunshine and storm?

-CROWD: Hillary! -REPORTER 2: For her last big rally

in South Carolina,

Hillary Clinton called in her number one surrogate.

REPORTER 3: The former president today sought

to lower expectations

suggesting Obama has the edge here because he's Black.

Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice in '84 and '88.

And he ran a good campaign,

and Senator Obama's run a good campaign here,

he's run a good campaign everywhere.

He's got a good-- He's a good candidate

with a good organization.

When Bill Clinton came out at the South Carolina primary

and, uh, tried to dismiss the significance-- Kind of,

"Well, even Jesse Jackson won that."

What are you saying?

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -SHARPTON: Translation,

even if he wins,

Obama is just this year's Jesse Jackson.

(CROWD CHEERING)

CROWD: Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

-Yes, we can! Yes, we can! -Thank you. Thank you!

CROWD: Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

-Yes, we can! Yes, we can! -Thank you, everybody. Thank you!

OBAMA: You know, over two weeks ago,

-we saw the people of Iowa... -CROWD: Whoo!

...proclaim that our time for change has come.

(CROWD CHEERING)

But there were those who doubted

this country's desire for something new.

Who said Iowa was a fluke not to be repeated again.

Well, tonight, the cynics who believed

that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion,

were told a different story

by the good people of South Carolina.

(CROWD CHEERING)

AXELROD: South Carolina was a beautiful night.

He got about 30 percent of white votes in the state

in addition to a majority of Black votes,

and built the multi-racial coalition

that we had hoped for.

Completely outstripped everyone's expectations.

(CROWD CHEERING)

AXELROD: And in that hall the night when he spoke,

there were people chanting race doesn't matter.

(CROWD CHANTING)

AXELROD: Now that was premature.

That was more of a hope than a reality,

but this was a big moment in the campaign,

and I think a big moment for the country.

I did not travel around this state over the last year

and see a white South Carolina or a Black South Carolina.

-I saw South Carolina. -(CROWD CHEERING)

This is not, though they are enormously important,

Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton,

stalwarts of the Civil Rights movement.

But those who were perceived to be, necessarily so, as people

who could channel Black anger, to express Black grievance,

to realize Black progress.

With Barack Obama, there's a different moment here.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -I saw what America is,

and I believe in what this country can be.

That is the country I see. That is the country you see,

but now it is up to us

to help the entire nation embrace this vision.

(CROWD CHEERING)

DYSON: He really resonated in a more transcendent way.

In a way that was informed by a broader sweep

of the American possibility,

because his own life was the product of that.

He gave an interracial pedigree to hopefulness.

(AIRPLANE ENGINE REVVING)

I know what America can achieve, I've seen it!

I've lived it!

And with Barack Obama we can do it again!

(CROWD CHEERING)

AXELROD: The Kennedy endorsement

was incredibly important for Obama.

Not because Kennedy would bring large numbers of votes...

but because Kennedy was an establishment figure

and his willingness to lay hands on Obama

and say he's ready to be president

really spoke to concerns that people had about that.

ANNOUNCER: The next president of the United States,

-Hillary Clinton! -(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER: The endorsement is a huge blow to Hillary Clinton,

a longtime friend and colleague of Ted Kennedy.

REPORTER 2: The senior senator from Massachusetts

repeatedly scolded Bill Clinton

for his divisive tactics in South Carolina.

-(CROWD APPLAUDING) -REPORTER 3: For Bill Clinton, who has always

cast himself as President Kennedy's political heir,

today's endorsement is a slap in the face.

We need to nominate somebody with the experience,

and the fortitude, and the know-how

to take whatever they send our way

-and send it right back. -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

REPORTER 4: As of tonight, our latest CBS News Democratic delegate count

shows Obama leading Clinton by 97.

So the battle goes on, and with ten straight wins

-momentum is on Obama's side. -(CROWD CHEERING)

This is our moment!

This is our time!

REPORTER 5: And another blow today to the Clinton campaign.

She's lost 11 straight primaries and caucuses to Barack Obama

and now Clinton has lost a very important supporter.

Congressman John Lewis of Georgia switched sides today.

-He is now backing Obama. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

He represented something new.

He represented a real sense of hope and optimism.

(CROWD CHEERING)

JOHN LEWIS: It was daring, just daring.

DYSON: It became uncomfortable for Black people to explain,

as political leaders, why they weren't with Obama.

So, it's not that they swayed the people to support Obama.

Obama's love among the people

swayed the leaders to come along.

CROWD: Obama!

SHARPTON: I felt that it was my responsibility

to be true to the cause.

What really was going to help the cause?

Putting a guy like this in The White House,

if we could help do that and not get in the way.

Or playing to the--

what, uh, my pastors call the "cheap seats"

of just rah-rah-rah, and we end up with nothing.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -Thanks for being here. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

REPORTER: Now moving on to the Republicans,

John McCain clinched the nomination last night.

And today, he went over to The White House.

Last night, both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton called

to congratulate me.

I pledged at that time and I pledge again,

a respectful campaign.

A respectful campaign based on the issues

and based on the stark differences

and vision that we have for the future of America.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -How's it going Mississippi?

REPORTER 2: In another win for Barack Obama

last night in Mississippi,

he regained a significant lead over Hillary Clinton

in the pledge delegate count.

But the talk of the Democratic race today

was once again about race,

and prominent Democrat Geraldine Ferraro's assertion

that Obama wouldn't have gotten this far if he was not Black.

GERALDINE FERRARO:

HILLARY: I rejected what she said,

and I certainly do repudiate it.

And, uh, regret deeply that, uh, you know, it was said.

I-- This-- This is politics, uh,

and, you know, part of the problem

that we have right now is that, uh, we have too much at stake

to be engaged in these politics.

You know, uh, campaigns are really long oral exams

and character tests for the presidency.

Ours really came on a day in March of 2008.

I served Trinity church for 36 years.

I had never taken a sabbatical.

So, I told the congregation,

Don't call, don't text, don't email,

I'm going on sabbatical.

First thing we're gonna do is go on a family vacation.

We're going on a cruise.

REPORTER: We want to turn now to an in-depth look

at a very important figure in Democratic frontrunner,

Barack Obama's life.

His long-time pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Reverend Wright has made a number

of controversial statements over the years.

Now that Obama is a national figure,

the question is,

could the Reverend become a liability?

COBB: The media had been taking a hit,

saying that they were going too soft on Barack Obama

and that they were having you know this, basically,

love fest, and that he hadn't gotten, uh,

the kind of critical coverage

that a presidential candidate needs.

And so they go to Jeremiah Wright.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -The angels in Heaven were singing,

God never fails!

ABC had all these tapes of Jeremiah Wright's sermons,

and there were millions of them and it kind of wasn't a priority.

They had a lot to do during the campaign.

♪ (THEME MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

REMNICK: Most of them are long and irrelevant to anything.

WRIGHT: Bless the Lord. Oh, my soul.

♪ (HYMN PLAYING) ♪

And then they stumble upon a couple of these sermons

that seemed incendiary.

The government gives them the drugs,

builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law,

and then wants us to sing "God Bless America"?

No, no, no, not God Bless America,

God Damn America!

That's in the bible, for killing innocent people.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -God Damn America.

They took clips and wove them together

into, you know, the most incendiary things he had said

over a 30-year career in like two minutes.

Uh, but it had the desired effect.

We have supported state terrorism

against the Palestinians and Black South Africans,

-and now we are indignant! -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

Because the stuff we have done overseas

is now brought right back into our own front yards!

They were deeply critical of American foreign policy

and in a language...

that was, uh, way more inflammatory

than most of America White America, could stomach.

And Obama had found a home in this church.

♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

WRIGHT: Cruise ships only broadcast certain stations.

They had Fox News on the boat...

and were playing a-- a clip...

from a sermon I preached...

the Sunday after 9/11/01.

I say, "What?"

So, we started changing the channel.

It was on all of the channels.

I want to show you a clip from Barack Obama's pastor,

it's getting a lot of play right now.

We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki!

What you're about to hear is inflammatory to some,

to others, harsh as it sounds, it's the truth.

And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York

and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

Obviously, his remarks are incendiary.

It comes at a particularly bad time.

AXELROD: Obama was in the Senate the day

this "greatest hits of Reverend Wright" surfaced.

He was voting all day.

I don't think he had a sense of how much it had captured

the imagination of the media.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -God damn America.

REPORTER: We tried to reach Reverend Wright

to get his reaction now

to the fallout from his fire and brimstone sermon,

but we're told he's on vacation and not available.

On a cruise ship they sit you at one table

where you sit every meal.

The white families at the table next to ours

had requested to be moved.

They don't want to sit next to an "anti-American racist."

A what?

And they will not only attack you

if you try to point out what's going on

in white America, US of KKK A.

This is going to scare the hell out of white people,

-and you know that that's true. -No, it's designed

to attempt to scare.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s last sermon was gonna be

"Why America may go to hell."

It was not "America should go to hell."

It didn't-- It was not "America ought to go to hell."

It may go to hell

because if you don't come to terms with racism,

poverty, militarism, materialism,

those evils are gonna suck all the good stuff

out of your democracy.

That's in part what Jeremiah Wright

was talking about.

Barack knows what it means

to be a Black man living in a country

and a culture that is controlled by rich, white people.

Hillary can never know that.

Hillary ain't never been called a (BLEEP).

That became for us the cruise from hell.

I stayed in the cabin most of the time

so that the nasty remarks, name calling...

would not be something my family had to be exposed to.

But they heard that, my grandkids were hearing this.

Breaking news at this hour, after a day of headlines

about the controversial remarks by Pastor Jeremiah Wright

of the Trinity United Church of Christ,

Pastor Wright is quote "no longer

on the Obama presidential campaign committee."

WRIGHT: I was a chairperson of his religious advisory team.

I saw myself... get dismissed

from that position on television.

Your campaign saying this afternoon it had no plans

to ask Reverend Wright to step down.

Obviously, that has changed.

Did he step down tonight or did you ask him to leave?

You know, I-- I think there was a recognition

that, uh, he's on the verge of retirement,

he's taking a sabbatical, uh, and that it was important, uh,

for him to step out of the spotlight

in this situation.

Unfortunately, as an American politician,

you can't get too close to that kind of prophetic fire

or you get burned.

So, I can understand Barack, in some sense,

wanting to get a distance as a politician.

I-- These particular statements that have been gathered,

uh, are ones that I strongly objected to

strongly condemned. I-- Had I heard them in church,

I would have expressed that concern

directly, uh, to Reverend Wright.

So, I didn't become familiar with these until, uh, recently.

But on a personal level

and on a very deep, uh, truthful level,

you had to try to teach people

that there are voices in our society that are radical...

that are not up for elections.

AXELROD: He called me that night and said,

"I want to make a speech.

I want to make a speech about race, and I want to put

this Reverend Wright issue in context."

And we said, "Okay." And he said,

"And I want to do it no later than Tuesday."

This was Friday.

JARRETT: He felt that he owed the American people

an explanation

and that they had to hear it directly

and honestly from him.

SHARPTON: A very painful thing for Obama

was dealing with his pastor, very painful.

And it was very painful to the community

because people were angry

because they were trying to act like he threw his pastor

in front of the bus.

AXELROD: We set up this speech for the Constitution Center

in Philadelphia

on the theory that if you're gonna go down,

go down on a big stage.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

AXELROD: The anxiety in the room was palpable.

And he turned to me and said, "You know,

I'm gonna go out there and give this speech..."

(CROWD CHEERING)

"...and people will either accept it or they won't."

Thank you. Thank you.

-AXELROD: "And if they don't..." -Thank you. Thank you.

"...then I just won't be president,

but at least I'll have said what I think needs to be said."

He said, "That's worth something."

We the people, in order to form a more perfect union...

221 years ago...

in a hall that still stands across the street,

a group of men gathered and with these simple words

launched America's improbable experiment in democracy.

The document they produced was eventually signed,

but ultimately unfinished.

It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery.

I chose to run for president at this moment in history

because I believe deeply

that we cannot solve the challenges of our time

unless we solve them together.

Unless we perfect our union.

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: I think what was extraordinary

about Obama's so-called race speech

is the fact that it happened at all.

There was no precedent.

I mean, yes, Black people had run for president before,

but at this stage in the game,

there wasn't a clearly marked road that said,

this is how this kind of Black person deals

with people trying to disparage him

and take him down in the name of race.

Throughout the first year of this campaign,

against all predictions to the contrary...

we saw how hungry the American people were

for this message of unity.

Despite the temptation to view my candidacy

through a purely racial lens,

we won commanding victories in states

with some of the whitest populations

in the country.

Obama was forced to give a speech on race,

he was forced to.

He was in trouble.

This is not to say that race

has not been an issue in this campaign.

And yet, it's only been in the last couple of weeks

that the discussion of race in this campaign

has taken a particularly divisive turn.

COBB: Smaller things had ended presidential candidacies.

Howard Dean just yelled off key

and that was it, you know, his presidency is done.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms,

the statements of Reverend Wright

that have caused such controversy,

and in some cases pain.

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man.

The man I met more than 20 years ago

is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith

and who, over 30 years, has led a church

that serves the community

by doing God's work here on earth.

The church contains, in full, the kindness and cruelty,

the fierce intelligence, and the shocking ignorance,

the struggles and successes, the love

and, yes, the bitterness and biases

that make up the Black experience in America.

I can no more disown him

than I can disown the Black community.

I can no more disown him

than I can disown my white grandmother.

A woman who helped raise me,

a woman who sacrificed again and again for me,

a woman who loves me

as much as she loves anything in this world,

but a woman who once confessed her fear of Black men

who passed her by on the street.

And who, on more than one occasion,

has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes

that made me cringe.

These people are part of me.

And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

As opposed to just cutting Jeremiah Wright off immediately,

uh, or even kind of saying

"It's not possible for me to win,"

he does exactly what a professor

or a teacher would do in that circumstance,

which is step into the middle of it

and look at it, panoramically,

and then try to understand it for what it is.

Under other circumstances, we would call that a class.

In Barack Obama's circumstance,

this is a public address or speech.

The fact is that the comments that have been made

and the issues that have surfaced

over the last few weeks

reflect the complexities of race in this country

that we've never really worked through.

A part of our union that we have not yet made perfect.

We do not need to recite here

the history of racial injustice in this country,

but we do need to remind ourselves

that so many of the disparities that exist

between the African American community

and the larger American community today

can be traced directly to inequalities

passed on from an earlier generation

that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery

and Jim Crow.

The anger is real. It is powerful.

And to simply wish it away,

to condemn it without understanding its roots,

only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding

that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists

within segments of the white community.

Most working and middle-class white Americans

don't feel that they've been particularly privileged

by their race.

Their experience is the immigrant experience.

As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything.

They built it from scratch.

So, when they are told to bus their children

to a school across town,

when they hear an African American

is getting an advantage in landing a good job

or a spot in a good college

because of an injustice that they themselves never committed,

when they're told that their fears

about crime in urban neighborhoods

are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Now I believe in staying in contact with the humanity

of my precious white brothers and sisters,

but they need to understand

that in a white supremacist civilization,

you've been the beneficiary

of unbelievable privilege and entitlement,

that you have a right to justice,

you have a right to fairness,

but your resentment will never have the same weight,

morally and spiritually, as a Black rage

who had to come to terms with foremothers and forefathers

raped and violated and exploited and lynched.

And when he presented that equivalent,

it made me upset. I said, "You're not telling the truth!"

To wish away the resentments of white Americans,

to label them as misguided or even racist,

without recognizing they are grounded

in legitimate concerns, this too widens the racial divide

and blocks the path to understanding.

It was the attempt, the desire,

to create a language of embrace.

And his critics will say

that's, uh, a language that, um, ignores reality.

That it's too idealistic.

But that's him.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons

is not that he spoke about racism in our society,

it's that he spoke as if our society was static,

as if no progress had been made, as if this country,

a country that has made it possible

for one of his own members

to run for the highest office in the land

and build a coalition

-of white and Black... -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

...Latino, Asian, rich, poor, young and old,

is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

(CROWD APPLAUDING)

WRIGHT: The Senator came to my home to ask me

to stop preaching until after the election.

I've been preaching this way for 50 years...

regardless of who's running for what office.

Carol Moseley Braun, Harold Washington, Barack Obama.

That doesn't change or affect or alter the gospel in any way.

He then paid me one of the highest compliments

I've ever had paid to me.

He said to me, "You know what your problem is?"

I said, "What's my problem?"

"As a preacher, you have to speak the truth."

I said, "That's a good problem to have."

♪ (SOLEMN MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

INTERVIEWER: Do you consider yourself a Black man

-or an American first? -An American, absolutely.

Is there a difference

between Black patriotism and white patriotism?

No, I don't think so.

I mean, what... what I think is that

the African American community...

is much more familiar

with some of the darker aspects

of American life and American history.

I think that they understand America much less

-as a marching band playing... -(CROWD CHEERING)

...John Philip Sousa,

and they understand America much more

as a jazz composition with blue notes.

And-- And I think those are different things.

And so, the African American community

can express great rage and anger about this country

and love it all the same.

(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: Tonight, Minnesota...

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

...after 54 hard-fought contests...

CROWD: We love you, Obama!

...our primary season has finally come to an end.

(CROWD CHEERING)

Because you chose to listen not to your doubts

or your fears,

but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations.

Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey

with the beginning of another.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -A journey...

a journey that will bring a new and better day to America.

Because of you,

tonight I can stand here and say

that I will be the Democratic nominee

for the president of the United States of America.

(CROWD CHEERING)

BRIAN WILLIAMS: He is 46 years old and his life has been

an extraordinary American journey.

Last night he made history by becoming

the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party.

The first African American major party nominee.

He turned away Hillary Clinton,

the first woman to get as far as she did.

KATIE COURIC: This historic victory

comes with a two-fold challenge,

battling Senator John McCain

while trying to unify a deeply divided Democratic party.

So reporters don't unpack your bags,

it'll be a long hot summer.

KROFT: Senator McCain talks a great deal

about his experience as a-- as a prisoner of war...

-Right. Right. -...and how it has shaped him.

What is the thing that has shaped you?

It-- The story for me is...

of being born into pretty humble circumstances.

Not having a dad in the house.

But having a mother and grandparents who loved me,

who instilled in me some pretty, uh,

you know, Midwestern Kansas values of hard work

and stick-to-it-ness, and honesty

and looking out for other people, uh,

and-- and what's shaped me most powerfully,

maybe because I'm half Black and half white,

uh, that a big chunk of my childhood,

I was sort of an outsider, I didn't quite fit anywhere.

Part of what shapes me is--

is, uh, being able to find a connection

with all kinds of different people,

and-- and want to bring them together

and bridge misunderstandings, and-- and bridge conflict,

so that we can actually get things done.

And that, I think is something that led me into public service.

And in some ways, that's something

very profoundly American about me.

A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab?

The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -REPORTER: Rumors and innuendo

are as much a part of a presidential campaign

as flag pins and chicken dinners.

But after a week of radio talk shows

and websites spreading the word

that Michelle Obama may have used

a racial epithet against white people in a speech...

Some, uh-- uh, reference to white people

as "whities," allegedly.

...and continuing whispers about whether Obama is a Muslim,

the campaign has launched a new counter offensive,

a website. It's called FightTheSmears dot com

and is devoted to debunking false rumors about the Obamas.

First it was my name, right? That was a problem.

And then there was the Muslim-email thing.

This particular one alleges, among other things,

that you took the oath of office on the Quran

-and not the Bible? -(CHUCKLES)

Now it's the patriotism thing.

Barack Obama refuses to, uh, salute the flag,

he refuses to wear a flag pin.

And my wife's comment.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -Let me tell you something,

for the first time in my adult lifetime,

I'm really proud of my country.

She already clarified herself. She was very clear about it.

I'm proud of this country, and I'm proud

of the fact that people are ready

to roll up their sleeves and do something phenomenal.

There's always some nonsense going on

in general elections, right?

If it wasn't this, it'd be something else.

(CROWD CHEERING)

ALEXANDER: You know, the Obamas are remarkably focused.

Eyes on the prize.

The prize, by the way, is not the presidency.

The prize is the work.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

ALEXANDER: It's not that it does not hurt

to be defamed and misnamed.

But I think that what served both of them well,

was understanding that they were in service

to a larger ideal,

and that what leadership meant in that moment

was to just keep on the path.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -Thank you, guys.

IFILL: Racism is always a very convenient tool

to use by those who want power.

They don't have to, themselves, be motivated by race.

They can just be motivated by the desire to hold on to,

attain, or broaden their base of power.

And because racism is so deeply baked

into the American psyche,

you only have to tap into the vein.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -Thank you. Thank you, guys.

-ATTENDEE: Senator, good luck. -Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you, guys.

REPORTER: A political firestorm erupted today

over a magazine cover cartoon of Barack Obama and his wife.

The New Yorker cover depicts the couple

doing a fist bump in the Oval Office.

He's in Muslim clothing, she's in camouflage.

REPORTER 2: The cover also shows an American flag

burning in the fireplace

and a picture of Osama Bin Laden hangs on the wall.

♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

REMNICK: Barry Blitt drew a cover that meant

to take every crazy stereotype about Michelle and Barack Obama,

and put them into one image.

And you were seeing these images

and this rhetoric on Fox News for example, all the time.

We didn't draw it out of nowhere.

And, um, the reaction was not,

let's just say, uniformly fantastic.

WOLF BLITZER: I can't tell you how many people have said to me,

David, you know, if-- if they wouldn't have known

this was on the cover of The New Yorker magazine,

they would have just seen this cartoon

and they would have-- and been asked,

"Which magazine has this on the cover?"

Almost every one of us would've said

some neo-Nazi magazine, the Ku Klux Klan...

Oh, come on, Wolf, come on, come on, come on.

The fact is-- Wait a minute, the fact of the matter

is that it is on The New Yorker and context means a lot.

REPORTER: The New Yorker cover now appears on websites

of Obama's opponents, many conservatives.

The New Yorker's perceptive cover,

says RightWingNews dot com.

Obama had no response, but his campaign said, quote...

(READS QUOTE)

REMNICK: We had published, I don't know how many covers

making fun of George Bush, politically, in myriad ways.

The reason for the reaction to this cover

was that a mainly liberal audience said,

"Of course, I understand this.

-But those people out there..." -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

"...those rubes in the big square states

who can't understand anything are going to see this

as not something ironic or a comment on something,

but as reality."

And I found that wrong and condescending.

REPORTER: A new Newsweek poll suggests 12 percent of voters

still think Obama is a practicing Muslim,

26 percent think he was raised Muslim,

and 39 percent think he attended an Islamic school.

REPORTER 2: So, is the magazine pointing out anti-Obama myths

or perpetuating them?

(BUS ENGINE REVVING)

COBB: One sub current of the 2008 campaign

had been this really irrational fear

that Barack Obama represented

some sort of revenge-fantasy for Black people.

What his identity did was allow people to run wild

with the most feverish conjurings

of their conspiratorial minds.

So there is a really great moment

that expresses Obama's

kind of strategic relationship to Black identity,

and that was in the Democratic National Convention

in Denver in 2008.

(CROWD CHEERING)

JOHN KERRY: No one can question Barack Obama's patriotism.

Like all of us, he was taught what it means to be an American

by his family. His grandmother who worked

on a bomber assembly line in World War II,

his grandfather who marched in Patton's Army,

and his great uncle who enlisted in the army

right out of high school at the height of the war.

There's a point where John Kerry mentions

that Barack Obama's uncle,

who is a veteran of World War II,

was present in the convention hall.

And he requests that his uncle stand up

and be acknowledged by the crowd.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -KERRY: Please join me

in saluting this American hero, Charlie Payne.

(CROWD APPLAUDS)

COBB: This elderly white man stands up,

you know, this man who would not be out of place

at any VFW hall in the country.

And I happen to be with a group of Black delegates

who all howled with laughter...

because you understood exactly what he was doing.

And the guy next to me said, "If I had a white uncle,

I'd take him to every job interview I went to."

(CROWD CHEERING)

COBB: That was a kind of brilliant inversion

of the one-drop rule in America. Because as they say,

"If you are Black at all, you are all Black."

Barack Obama turned that inside out.

"If you don't understand who I am,

if you're trying to figure out who I am,

well, here's my uncle.

There's a good chance that you have an uncle

who is just like this guy."

KERRY: Charlie, your nephew, Barack Obama,

will end this politics of distortion and division.

That flag that hangs from the rafters

and that you have waved here this evening,

that flag doesn't belong to any ideology,

it doesn't belong to any political party.

It is an enduring symbol of our nation,

and it belongs to all the American people.

(CROWD CHEERING)

CROWD: John McCain! John McCain! John McCain!

John McCain! John McCain!

John McCain! John McCain!

My friends, I've spent the last few months

looking-- looking for a running mate

who can best help me shake up Washington

and make it start working again

for the people that are counting on us.

(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER: We're going to turn to the political preoccupation

of the nation.

Who will McCain pick for Vice President?

REPORTER 2: Of course, we know Barack Obama's selection

of a running mate was a tightly held secret.

OBAMA: For months, I've searched for a leader

to finish this journey alongside me.

I've found that leader.

(CROWD CHEERING)

A man with a distinguished record.

A man with fundamental decency.

-And that man is Joe Biden. -(CROWD CHEERING)

JOHN MCCAIN: My friends and fellow Americans,

I am very pleased and very privileged

to introduce to you

the next Vice President of the United States.

(CROWD CHEERING)

Governor Sarah Palin of the great state of Alaska.

(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER: If John McCain had hoped

to use his announcement of a running mate

to steal the spotlight from the Democrats

the day after their convention ended,

he succeeded.

The question of the day was Sarah who?

Who is Sarah Palin?

SARAH PALIN: I'm a hockey mom from Alaska.

I'm not one of those movers and shakers

within the Republican party

that I think, conventionally, you would think,

would be tapped.

REPORTER 2: Palin has been governor less than two years,

but is already the state's most popular politician.

She is the anti-Washington Republican conservative.

-Pro-gun, anti-abortion... -(GUNSHOTS)

...with a political record as far outside the beltway

-as anyone can get. -(CROWD CHEERING)

PALIN: Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska...

-(CROWD CHEERING) -...I was mayor of my hometown.

I guess a small-town mayor

is sort of like a community organizer,

except that you have actual responsibilities.

(CROWD CHEERING)

Whatever the long-term impact of Sarah Palin

on McCain's chances,

uh, she gave him a short-term adrenaline shot,

and his campaign began to attract big crowds.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

AXELROD: But the tone and tenor of the crowds

turned uglier and uglier.

I was reading today a copy of The New York Times.

(CROWD BOOING)

And I was really interested to read in there

about Barack Obama's friends from Chicago.

(CROWD BOOING)

Turns out one of his earliest supporters

is a man who, according to The New York Times,

was a domestic terrorist and part of a group--

(CROWD BOOING)

Part of a group that, quote,

"launched a campaign of bombings

that would target the Pentagon and the US Capitol."

(CROWD BOOING)

-Man. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

REPORTER 3: The Palin factor. The campaign

-that's turned down and dirty. -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

REPORTER 3: Down in the polls, the McCain campaign

has found a new attack dog.

OBAMA: Senator McCain and his operatives are gambling

that they can distract you with smears

rather than talk to you about substance.

I am just so fearful that this is not a man

who sees America the way that you and I see America.

They'd rather tear our campaign down

-than lift this country up. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

That's what you do when you're out of touch,

out of ideas, and running out of time.

(CROWD CHEERING)

PALIN: I'm afraid this is someone who sees America

as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist

who had targeted his own country.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

REMNICK: Even as just a journalist,

the cr-- crazy emails about how really I got it all wrong,

and that Barack Obama was created by terrorists

and bomb-throwing radicals.

Unfortunately, that crap entered the mainstream.

In the-- In the name of Sarah Palin.

He's palling around with terrorists.

This language was-- And feeling was--

It's not just some American marginalia over here.

People saw it as sufficient enough

that it needed whipping up.

(CROWD CHEERING)

I'm afraid if he wins, the Black will take over.

He seems like a sheep,

or a wolf in sheep's clothing, to be honest with you.

He must support terrorists.

You know, if-- if it walks like a duck

and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.

And that, to me, is Obama.

You have to have some degree of optimism

and some degree of faith in white America

because the majority of the population

can already be president. I don't know how you become

president without that, right?

Or at least at that point,

I don't know how you become president without that.

Uh, but I think also that that faith might prevent you

-from seeing certain things. -(CROWD CHEERING)

TA-NEHISI COATES: The belief in the goodness of white America

did not allow you to see... (CHUCKLES)

that this could actually get really bad.

-(CROWD APPLAUDING) -Yes, ma'am.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Ma'am, if you're going to walk up like that

I'm not going to give you the mic.

I'm not going to give you the mic.

ATTENDEE: Okay, I gotta ask you a question.

I do not, uh, believe in I can't trust Obama.

I-- I have read about him,

and he's not-- he's not-- he's a, uh,

-he's an Arab. He is not -(CROWD CHUCKLES)

-No, ma'am. No, ma'am. -ATTENDEE: No?

No, ma'am. No, ma'am. No, ma'am.

He's a-- He's a decent, family man,

citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with

on-- on fundamental issues,

and that's what this campaign is all about.

-He's not. Thank you. Thank you. -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

-Yes. -♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

We all thought that was McCain's finest moment

in the whole, uh, campaign.

-Now, I want to acknowledge... -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

...uh, that Senator McCain, yesterday, tried to tone down

the rhetoric in some of his town halls.

(CROWD SHOUTING)

AXELROD: I don't think Obama was surprised

by some of the acrimony out there.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

This is little Hussein.

AXELROD: He understood that there were these

-darker impulses out there. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

But at the same time, he was traveling the country,

and there were as many as a hundred thousand people

showing up at his rallies.

That was a tonic in a way for some of the ugliness

that we saw on the other side.

(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: We have had a-- a remarkable campaign...

and, uh, you know, when we started 21 months ago,

I-- I didn't know how it would turn out.

And no matter what happens tomorrow,

I'm going to feel good about how it's turned out

because all of you have created

-this incredible campaign. -(CROWD CHEERING)

Uh, some of you heard that my grandmother, uh,

who helped raise me, passed away,

uh, early this morning...

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -...and I--

-Look, she-- she has gone home. -CROWD: Yeah!

And she died peacefully in her sleep...

with my sister at her side.

And so, there's great joy as well as tears.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -I'm not gonna talk about it too long,

because it's hard a little to talk about.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -Uh...

She was somebody who was a very humble person

and a very plain-spoken person.

She was one of those quiet heroes

that we have all across America...

-ATTENDEE: Just like you! -...who--

They're not famous.

Uh, their names aren't in the newspapers,

But each and every day they work hard.

They look after their families.

They sacrifice for their children

and their grandchildren.

They aren't seeking the limelight.

All they try to do is just do the right thing.

And the satisfaction that they get

is seeing that their children,

and maybe their grandchildren or their great grandchildren,

uh, live a better life than-- than they did.

And that's what America's about.

That's what we're fighting for.

And, North Carolina...

in just one more day,

-we have the opportunity... -(CROWD CHEERING)

...to honor all those quiet heroes

all across America and all across North Carolina.

We can bring change to America

to make sure that their work and their sacrifice is honored.

That's what we're fighting for!

♪ (INTENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

REPORTER: They opened the floodgates this morning

at voting places across the country.

REPORTER 2: The lines began forming,

even before the sun came up.

REPORTER 3: And in many cases,

lines as far as the eye could see.

REPORTER 2: Even with the long lines,

both campaigns were still working feverishly

to add to them.

Anybody else you can get to come out and help us,

-we'd really appreciate it. -(CROWD APPLAUDING)

REPORTER 4: In Indianapolis, Obama worked the phones

in a last minute "get out the vote" effort.

Hi, Pam?

This is Barack Obama, how are you?

It wasn't unexpected at that point

that he was going to be elected, if you looked at the polling.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

KEN MACK: But, I was one of the people

who firmly believed that, "I'll believe it when I see it."

Of course in politics, it ain't over until people vote.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: I was one of those people

who that was my first time ever voting, period.

Like, ever.

Like, Barack Obama was the first person

that energized me and made me say,

"Yo, I want to go out here and vote."

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

I decided to call a watch-night service

like we do on New Year's Eve,

down at Martin Luther King's church in Atlanta.

(CONGREGATION APPLAUDING)

LEWIS: This election is not the promised land,

but I tell you, it is a major down payment

-on the promised land. -(CONGREGATION CHEERING)

And when it flashed across that screen,

-Obama won Ohio, -(CONGREGATION CHEERING)

I was in my fifties,

and it was the first time in my life

that I could honestly tell a kid,

-you could be president. -(CONGREGATION CHEERING)

-(CROWD CHEERING) -WOLF: We're only a few seconds

away from the top of the hour

when these states will be closing

and there are some big ones. And presumably,

we'll be able to see what's going on and make,

perhaps, a major projection at that point.

This is a moment that a lot of people have been waiting for.

This is a moment that, potentially,

could be rather historic...

CROWD: Five, four, three, two, one! (CHEERING)

And CNN can now project that Barack Obama,

47 years old, will become the President-elect

of the United States.

We project he now has enough electoral votes.

-More than... -LEWIS: I never thought

that I would live to see a Black man

or a Black woman as president of the United States of America.

My own mother, my own father, my grandparents

didn't become registered voters

until after the Voting Rights Act was passed

and signed into law on August 6th, 1965.

(CROWD CHEERING)

LEWIS: And to live to see

Barack Obama become president of the United States of America

was almost too much.

(CROWD CHEERING)

LEWIS: I jumped up so high

I didn't think my feet were going to touch the floor,

and I started crying.

(CROWD CHEERING)

It was the moment...

the movement and the mission all came together.

Man, to my mind came the martyrs.

(INDISTINCT CLAMOR)

JESSE JACKSON: Our warriors fight for civil rights

in America, we're soldiers too.

Fighting for freedom in America is risky, it's very dangerous.

(GUNSHOT FIRES)

JESSE: And those who made it possible were not there.

(CROWD CHEERING)

I wish Dr. King, Medgar Evers...

for a moment just--

God gave them 15 seconds to look at-- look at their work.

This is their work, he's the result of our work.

-ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen... -(CROWD CHEERING)

...the next First Family of the United States of America.

-When he won, we all won. -(CROWD CHEERING)

I went to Grant Park. If you're in Grant Park,

it seemed like America had finally done

-something significant. -(CROWD CHEERING)

MACK: It was an affirmation

of what America could be at its best.

America's not always at its best.

But, I-- I felt, that night, election night,

as a Black man in America,

that this is what America could be.

(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: If there is anyone out there...

who still doubts that America is a place

where all things are possible...

who still wonders if the dream of our founders

is alive in our time...

who still questions the power of our democracy,

tonight is your answer.

(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: It's been a long time coming...

but tonight, because of what we did on this day,

in this election, at this defining moment,

-change has come to America. -(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: That's the true genius of America...

that America can change.

Our union can be perfected.

This election had many firsts and many stories

that will be told for generations,

but one that's on my mind tonight's

about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta.

She is a lot like the millions of others

who stood in line to make their voice heard

in this election, except for one thing,

Anne Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery,

when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons.

Because she was a woman

and because of the color of her skin.

And this year, in this election,

she touched her finger to a screen and cast her vote

because after 106 years in America,

through the best of times and the darkest of hours,

she knows how America can change.

-Yes, we can. -CROWD: Yes, we can!

OBAMA: America, we have come so far.

We have seen so much.

But there's so much more to do.

So, tonight, let us ask ourselves...

If our children should live to see the next century...

if my daughters should be so lucky

to live as long as Anne Nixon Cooper,

what change will they see?

What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call.

This is our moment.

This is our time to reclaim the American dream

and reaffirm that fundamental truth

that out of many, we are one.

That while we breathe, we hope.

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.

-CROWD: Yes, we can! -Thank you, God bless you,

and may God bless the United States of America.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)

-Oh wow! -(CROWD CHUCKLES)

-Nice, guys. Thank you. -(JOE BIDEN CHUCKLES)

Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you very much.

This morning, we woke up to more sobering news

about the state of our economy.

Now, the United States has only one government

and one president at a time.

And until January 20th of next year,

that government is the current administration.

I've spoken to President Bush.

I appreciate his commitment

to ensuring that his economic policy team

keeps us fully informed as developments unfold.

And I'm also thankful

for his invitation to The White House.

-(AIRPLANE ENGINE REVVING) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

REPORTER: For almost two years now,

Barack Obama has been in campaign mode.

And suddenly overnight, everything has changed.

BARBARA WALTERS: Barack Obama will replace

one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history.

He will inherit two wars

-and an economic crisis not seen... -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

...since The Great Depression.

REPORTER 3: His first legislative goal

will be to get Congress to pass an economic stimulus package

that he hopes will create jobs and put money in the pockets

-of ordinary citizens. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

KROFT: Have there been moments when you've said,

-"What did I get myself into?" -(CHUCKLES)

You know, surprisingly enough, I feel, uh, right now that...

I'm- I'm doing what I should be doing.

(CROWD CHEERING)

OBAMA: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear.

JOHN ROBERTS: That I will execute the office

of President to the United States faithfully.

LEWIS: The day when he was inaugurated,

I walked up to him and asked him to sign something.

He wrote on this piece of paper,

"It's all because of you, John."

I said, Well, thank you Mr. President.

He gave me a hug, I hugged him.

-And we both teared up. -(CROWD CHEERING)

WEST: Now, you've got a Black man in that White House

built primarily by Black slaves.

That's moment that, uh, I think all of us

of all colors would feel very, very deeply.

I'll never forget that as long as I live.

(CROWD CHEERING)

COATES: Rappers and basketball players.

That was the range in which Black men existed

in the pop culture for the most part.

That was it.

And so it was really something beautiful

about, you know, seeing something else.

This was Black Camelot.

How much more American could we get than this?

(CROWD CHEERING)

ALVIN LOVE: After the parade, he came back to The White House

for a meeting with several of us,

uh, who had been friends with him across the years.

And as he got ready to go, he grabbed me and he said,

"Rev, I'm in it now."

He said, "Pray for me."

♪ (THEME MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I wanted to get everyone together, on the first day,

to welcome you to the White House.

SPEAKER: When he was elected, a lot of Americans

had never had a Black boss, and here he was,

the highest authority figure in the land.

It was naive for us to think there wouldn't be a backlash.

SPEAKER 2: There's a huge number of people out there

talking about taking their country back.

-(CROWD COMMOTION) -BARACK OBAMA: If we can recognize ourselves

in folks who, on the surface

seem different, we can move forward together.

SPEAKER 3: Time-and-time again, he's trying to find

some sort of middle ground. There is no middle ground.

OBAMA: The strongest democracies endure when people find a way

to set aside smaller differences,

in service of a greater purpose. I have full faith

and confidence that we can do it.

I wanted to get everyone together

on the first day

to welcome you to the White House.

And from our vantage point yesterday,

you couldn't help but be inspired

by the sight of Americans, as far as the eye could see.

They were there because they believe

this is a moment of great change in America,

a time for reinvigorating our democracy

and remaking our country.

However long we are keepers of the public trust,

we should never forget that we are here

as public servants,

and public service is a privilege.

Public service is simply and absolutely

about advancing the interests of Americans.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

MARTY NESBTT: I remember my wife and I

heading up to the residence

on the first day that they were in

the White House and riding up with an elevator operator...

this African American guy

who had worked in the White House

for 40 years at that time,

and I said, "So how did it feel during this whole process

where an African American was on his way to be elected

President of the United States?"

And he said, "At no time during the entire campaign

did I ever think he was going to win."

He said, "That is how improbable

it all felt to a man my age."

No one thought we would live to see this thing.

But what did that day signify? That was the question.

How much had America changed because it had finally

gotten rid of this hereditary barrier

to occupancy of the White House, that is race?

MICHELE NORRIS: During the Obama candidacy,

there was a word that was in vogue.

There were a lot of people,

people of influence,

talking about the notion that America

might be entering a post-racial status.

Post-racial is an interesting word,

you know, it was a new word.

It was not part of the American vernacular.

It's interesting why

we, as a society, embraced that word.

Was it hope?

That maybe race would be less important?

Was a hubris?

Were we deluded?

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

AL SHARPTON: I think that when you study history...

All right, guys.

...every time we made a step forward,

there was always a backlash.

We go from Lincoln's emancipation proclamation

into reconstruction, Ku Klux Klan,

White Citizens Council, backlash.

Supreme Court decisions, backlash.

Turn of the century, NAACP is formed.

Backlash. Lynchings.

All the way up through the Civil Rights Movement.

It was naive for us to think there wouldn't be a backlash

to the first Black president.

♪ (TUNE CONCLUDES) ♪

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

Hello, everybody.

Well, it is great to see you.

I wanna thank both the House and the Senate

for moving forward very diligently

on this process of getting

a recovery and renewal plan passed.

I know that it is a heavy lift

to do something as substantial as we're doing right now.

I recognize that there are still some differences

around the table, and between the administration

and members of Congress, about particular details

on the plan.

This is Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

Earlier this week,

President Obama came to Capitol Hill

to speak with members of my party about his plan

for an economic recovery bill.

Hello, everybody.

-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING)

We had a wonderful exchange of ideas,

and I continue to be optimistic about our ability to get

this recovery package done, and put people back to work.

The task for Democrats in the House

was to craft a stimulus plan that was timely,

targeted, and temporary.

Apparently, they didn't get the memo.

JOHN LEWIS: They were some forces

working against President Barack Obama,

there were members of Congress...

they were some very powerful individuals

simply would not let him succeed.

I don't expect a hundred percent agreement

from my Republican colleagues, but I do hope that

we can all put politics aside

and do the American people's business right now. All right?

MICHAEL DYSON: We know that Mitch McConnell

was not devoted

to making sure that he could work with this man,

to forge a connection that would have given the world

a sense of what is possible when Americans agree,

even if they disagree politically.

That they agree that the nation

is bigger than their partisanship,

than their political affiliation.

BARACK: The plan's not perfect. No plan is.

I can't tell you for sure that everything in this plan

will work exactly as we hope,

but I can tell you with complete confidence

that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis,

as well as the pain felt by millions of Americans.

When Barack became president...

he still had the sense of fair play.

Now, all through his organizing days,

this was a kind of a argument between us.

Barack insisted that we appoint

some of the other members of the community

who had fought against us

in the interest of cohesiveness, and we were, like, "Why?"

The strongest democracies flourish

from frequent and lively debate.

But they endure when people of every background and belief

find a way to set aside smaller differences

in service of a greater purpose.

I have full faith and confidence that we can do it.

But we're gonna have to work together.

(CROWD CHEERS, APPLAUDS)

REPORTER: The Democrats are claiming this

as a major victory for President Obama.

Barack Obama, in just a few short weeks as president,

has passed one of the biggest packages for economic relief

in our country's history.

There you go, it's done.

REPORTER: The package is intended to cut taxes,

increase jobs, and modernize infrastructure.

But it's a victory that came

with almost no Republican support,

a long way from those hopes of bipartisanship.

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

They didn't care whether the American people suffer.

They only cared with the perception

of not working with this president,

and it was all about race.

You can dress it up, you can dress it down,

but it was all about race.

ANNOUNCER: Madam Speaker,

the President of the United States.

MICHELE: When he was elected,

there were a lot of Americans who've never had a Black boss.

And here he was the highest authority figure in the land.

DAVID REMNICK: Look, let's not be naive here.

Political parties are in a permanent state

of opposition and political battle.

And to some degree

that's as it should be. It's a battle for ideas

and whose policy is better, and all the rest.

On the other hand,

he was met with absolute wall of recalcitrance from day one.

I don't think you can ever separate

politics from race, when it comes to Barack Obama.

How did he become president, and why.

The first important reason was the speech he gave in 2004

at the Democratic Convention where his whole theme was

bringing the divergent threads of America together,

and he gets elected president, and the Republicans say

"Forget that. We don't want that."

"We don't want you."

TA-NEHISI COATES: This does not require

a Mitch McConnell or John Boehner,

or Paul Ryan to be personally racist.

That's not really the question,

or be bad people, or bigots, or whatever,

however, you want it. That's not the actual question.

The question is structural.

What is the Republican Party right now?

What was the Republican Party when Barack Obama

entered office?

♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

TA-NEHISI: It was a white party.

How can you have your first Black president

and race, or racism be no factor?

Ann Compton.

Hey, Ann.

-Could I ask you about race? -BARACK: You may.

ANN COMPTON: Yours is a rather historic presidency,

and I'm just wondering whether in any of the policy debates

that you've had within the White House,

the issue of race has come up,

or has the last 64 days been a relatively colorblind time?

I think that the last 64 days has been dominated by

me trying to figure out how we're gonna fix the economy.

And that affects Black, brown, and white.

And, you know, obviously, at the inauguration,

I think that there was justifiable pride

on the part of the country that we have taken

a step to move us beyond...

some of the searing legacies

of racial discrimination in this country.

But that lasted about a day.

Frankly, I spend a lot of time trying to forget the details

of that day.

But I learned something.

I learned that being locked in a cage,

no matter how short a time,

is one of the worst nightmares

any human being could ever experience.

There's nothing quite like the sense of finality.

Someone puts you in a cage, slams the door behind you,

and you hear that clank.

And you have no idea how long you're gonna be there.

BARACK: Good evening. Before I take your questions,

I wanna talk for a few minutes about

the progress we're making on health insurance reform,

and where it fits into our broader economic strategy.

Now, six months ago, I took office...

In the summer of 2009, we were running out of time

to get health care reform done that year,

and it was important to finish it,

so that we could move on to the rest

of President Obama's agenda.

So, President Obama decided to have

a press conference where he would have

the sole topic be health care.

We will pass reform that lowers cost,

promotes choice, and provides coverage

that every American can count on,

and we will do it this year.

With that, I'll take your questions.

The press conference went very well,

and except the last question.

REPORTER: Recently, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

was arrested at his home in Cambridge.

What does that incident say to you,

and what does it say about race relations in America?

BARACK: I don't know all the facts.

What's been reported, though,

is that the guy forgot his keys,

uh, jimmied his way to get into the house.

There was...

a report called into the police station

that there might be a burglary taking place.

So far so good.

My understanding is, is that Professor Gates

then shows his ID to show that this is his house.

And at that point, he gets arrested

for disorderly conduct.

Now, I've...

I don't know, not having been there,

and not seeing all the facts,

what role race played in that.

But I think it's fair to say, number one,

any of us would be pretty angry.

Number two, that the Cambridge Police...

acted stupidly in arresting somebody

when there was already proof

that they were in their own home.

JAMES CROWLEY: I support the President

of the United States 110 percent.

I think he's way off base, wading into a local issue,

without knowing all the facts as he himself stated

before he made that comment.

That's not to say Gates was wrong,

that's not to say the officer was wrong.

Should President Obama had gone on national television

last night and decided that the officers acted stupidly?

In arresting him after proving that was his home.

You have to add that, Rick.

You know...

it's difficult to be the first anything.

And I think those figures expend

an extraordinary amount of energy

resisting situations that might inflame.

President Obama has tried to bridge the racial divide

in this country, but based on the ferocious response

to his comment last night, he may have opened up

a new chasm.

I think what he said was true.

But the backlash...

My office was flooded with hate phone calls

and hate email.

And you could see it in the media,

the way he was attacked.

Let's face it. President Obama's Black,

and I think he's got a chip on his shoulder,

I think there are elements in this country

he doesn't like, and he never has liked.

This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy,

over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred

for white people or the white culture,

I don't know what it is.

KEN MACK: He knows what it's like to be a Black man

in the United States.

But also he has to symbolize something larger,

than just being a Black man in the United States,

he's gotta be President of the United States.

To the extent that my choice of words

didn't illuminate, but rather contributed

to more media frenzy, I think that was unfortunate.

And that just was a microcosm of one of the conundrums

he faced as president, that if he spoke about race,

there was immediately a controversy.

But people wanted him to speak about race,

and he felt these things, too.

So, there's no real right answer.

One last point I guess I'd make.

So, there are some who say that as president,

I shouldn't have stepped into this at all

because it's a local issue.

I have to tell you that, that thing--

that part of it I disagree with.

Whether I were Black or white...

I think that...

me commenting on this,

and hopefully, contributing to constructive,

as opposed to negative understandings about the issue,

is part of my portfolio.

So...

HENRY GATES JR.: President Obama called me

and he said he had spoken to Officer Crowley,

and what did I think about the idea...

of having a beer at the White House.

And instinctively,

I realized that this wasn't about Officer Crowley and me.

This was about addressing this wave of white supremacy

that had erupted so unexpectedly at the embarkation

of the era of racelessness,

which we thought his election had inaugurated.

MICHAEL: Many people in his administration

did not want him to apologize.

No beer summit.

Many young Black people, staffers,

"You didn't do anything wrong. You spoke the truth."

But speaking the truth is one thing,

offending whites upon whom you depend

for polls and reelection is another.

That spelled bad news for those who were advocates

for an explicit engagement with the issue of race.

It was an attempt by Obama to calm the waters,

because the polls were showing...

that the numbers were against Obama

being critical about the police.

He was siding against the police.

HENRY: The day after Officer Crowley and I

met at the White House,

all the phone calls, all the hate mails,

and all the people picketing outside my house,

poof, disappeared like magic.

Hello, North Carolina.

Health care reform was a challenging issue

for many presidents.

Seven presidents had tried, seven presidents had failed.

Barack Obama was determined to get it done.

It is not only great to be back in Raleigh.

It is also nice to get out of Washington.

(ALL CHUCKLE)

With all the noise and the fussing

and the fighting that goes on,

it's pretty easy for the voices of everyday people to get lost.

So, let me just explain why the health

of the American people, and the American economy

demands health insurance reform.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

REPORTER: They're vocal.

Say no! Just say no!

REPORTER: They're impassioned.

We want you to represent us as the majority.

REPORTER: And they've got everyone

talking about health reform.

Now, this led us to ask questions.

REPORTER: Many of those raising their voices at town halls

have never been politically active.

Take John Bair.

He found an outlet in the conservative

anti-tax Tea Party movement, whose organizers

are now busing protesters to health care town halls.

The American people are not stupid.

Only common sense tells you we just can't support this.

(CROWD CLAMORS)

I got one letter from a woman.

She said, "I don't want government-run health care.

I don't want your socialist plan.

And don't touch my Medicare."

The opponents of the Affordable Care Act,

some of whom would be the beneficiaries of it...

No more Medicare.

DAVID: ...were led to believe...

by political forces

that they were going to lose something,

someone else was going to gain something.

The inference was that 'someone' were poor minorities,

you know, maybe illegal immigrants, and so on.

I mean, it was-- it was an ugly campaign.

Democrats have been scrambling to put to bed the rumors

that death panels that will decide the fate

of your loved ones is a part of healthcare reform.

And some committee is gonna decide,

what is the cost-benefit analysis for grandma?

Grandma is not just your grandmother,

she's a statistic.

REPORTER: Even former Alaska governor

Sarah Palin jumped into the fray

with a Facebook posting, claiming her young son,

who suffers from Down Syndrome,

would be subjected to death panels

under the proposed health reforms.

Where we do disagree, let's disagree over things

that are real.

Not these wild misrepresentations

that bear no resemblance

to anything that's actually been proposed.

(CHEERS)

JELANI COBB: There had been a paranoia around Obama,

all with the current of it,

you know, since he became a viable figure

in national politics.

And so it's not shocking

that you see these town hall meetings

that seem to teeter on the brink of bedlam.

They really don't belong here, and I'm gonna ask them to leave.

All of this is happening in direct relationship

to this idea of who the president is,

and, you know, what you believe

that this president's ultimate agenda is.

Most inscrutably for a legislation

that was going to overwhelmingly benefit

uninsured white people,

one of the right-wing talking points was that

the Affordable Care Act was some sort of stealth plan

to give Black people reparations.

BARACK: Some of people's concerns

have grown out of bogus claims,

spread by those whose only agenda

is to kill reform at any cost.

The best example is the claim,

made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts

but by prominent politicians, that we plan to set up

panels of bureaucrats with the power

to kill off senior citizens.

Now such a charge would be laughable,

if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible.

It is a lie, plain and simple.

(CROWD CHEERS, APPLAUDS)

Now.

Now.

There are also those who claim that our reform efforts

would insure illegal immigrants.

This, too, is false.

The reforms-- the reforms I'm proposing

would not apply to those who are here illegally.

(CROWD INDISTINCT CHATTER)

That's not true.

And one more misunderstanding I wanna clear up...

A member of Congress blurted out and heckled the President,

"You lie" in the middle of the speech.

I mean, we had presidents that had got up,

and said all kind of things that we didn't like.

And you had civil rights leaders in the Congress

from Adam Clayton Powell all the way to John Lewis,

that never happened.

But they almost felt they were entitled to do that to him.

SHERRILYN IFILL: I'll never forget the feeling of it.

I'll never forget. I mean, I'm right now, I'm discussing it

and I'm enraged at this moment.

Of the disrespect that was shown to this Black man,

because that's who he was for them.

He was not the president.

And it was despicable.

I, last night, heard from the leadership

that they wanted me to contact the White House,

and state that my statements were inappropriate, I did.

I'm a big believer that we all make mistakes.

He apologized quickly and without equivocation,

and I'm appreciative of that.

VALERIE: There are people who thought he should have stopped

and checked him for that,

and chastised him in public, and he said,

"I'm trying to get healthcare passed."

SHERRILYN: I could understand why he was driving them crazy.

There were just moments where he was so masterful,

so intellectually capable,

so astute, so informed, so clear.

Part of the goal here, I think, is to figure out,

what are the areas that we do agree on,

what are the areas where we don't agree,

and at the end of that process,

then make an honest assessment

as to whether we can bridge these differences.

I don't know yet whether we can.

And this is, of course, the reality about race,

and racism in this country.

The exclusion of Black people

was not because they actually thought we were inferior,

it was because they feared competition.

And it was the fear of somebody just like him

that would potentially shatter, and smash every stereotype.

And I think it was maddening for them.

Does it frustrate you when your own supporters

see racism when you don't think it exists?

Well, look,

I think that race is such a volatile issue

in this society, always has been,

that it becomes hard for people

to separate out race

being sort of a part of the backdrop

of American society

versus race being a predominant factor

in any given debate.

The overwhelming part of the American population

I think is right now following this debate,

and they're trying to figure out is this gonna help me?

CROWD: (CHANTING) Kill the bill! Kill the bill!

JOHN BOEHNER: This healthcare bill

will ruin our country. It's time to stop him.

REPORTER 1: It is the 11th hour in the debate

over health care reform.

Democrats insist they've got the momentum,

but the President is taking no chances.

REPORTER 2: President Obama made a last-minute visit

to the Capitol this afternoon.

To call on Democratic lawmakers to ignore the political risk

and do what he calls the right thing.

The question is whether enough right-leaning Democrats

will go along when the votes are cast tomorrow afternoon.

REPORTER 3: Around the Capitol today,

protesters gather to cheer on the plan's opponents...

CROWD: (CHANTING) Kill the bill!

REPORTER 3: ...and to jeer Democratic leaders.

(CROWD CHEERS)

JOHN: As we start walking,

the Democratic members, I will never forget it.

(CROWD CHEERS, CLAMORS)

JOHN LEWIS: This is the 100th anniversary

of the march across the bridge in Selma.

(CROWD CHEERING)

JOHN: And it reminded me.

There were people yelling using the N-word...

cursing people...

spitting on members.

This debate has been a difficult debate.

Don't do it for me.

Don't do it for the Democratic Party,

do it for the American people.

They're the ones who are looking for action right now.

Dr. King, like President Obama,

believed that healthcare is a right.

CROWD: (CHANTING) Kill the bill! Kill the bill!

JOHN LEWIS: And we were determined.

We walked on the floor,

we cast our votes,

-and we passed the bill. -ANNOUNCER: That's it.

(ALL APPLAUD)

DAVID: When the final votes came in,

I went into my office and I closed the door.

I just sobbed because I had a child with a chronic illness,

and I almost went bankrupt

when I was a young newspaper reporter

because we couldn't afford her medication.

-Yeah! -All right! What's next?

DAVID: And I knew that because of what he had done,

others wouldn't have to go through that.

And I went and I found him...

and I thanked him on behalf of those families.

And he put his hand on my shoulder and he said,

"That's why we do the work."

MICHAEL: Mr. Obama is an extraordinary human being

who's a great president potentially.

We love him, we think he's a marvelous human being,

but at the same time, a Black agenda

is not qualified or surrendered

because Mr. Obama is in the White House.

I was hoping that he would make poverty

much more of a central issue

even as he was trying to reconstruct the economy.

But by reconstructing the economy, he had a chance

to render Wall Street elites accountable.

And that was the beginning of my deep suspicion

that lo and behold he was leaning in the direction

away from the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

We already see that any president

is under tremendous pressure from the strong,

the corporate elites, Wall Street oligarchs.

Various powerful folks at the top,

and can easily push Obama in such a way

that he tilts too much toward the strong,

and doesn't focus the way he ought on the weak,

on the poor, on working people. That's why we're here today.

MICHAEL: Look, on the one hand who could blame Obama?

I don't wanna be pigeonholed as the Black president.

I don't wanna pigeonholed

as the only thing I can talk about is race.

In fact, when I come into office, the greatest thing

that is confronting the nation is the economy.

Do I allow the banks to fail?

Stop. Can you imagine the headlines

after the first Black president allows the banks to fail?

And yet, equally de-spiriting was his reluctance

to even weigh in.

I don't think that there was any way possible

for Barack Obama as president to ever come up

to the expectations of the African American community

because they expected him really to undo 400 years of injustice

with the stroke of a pen.

KEN: I understand the left critique of Obama,

or either the Black left critique of Obama,

that America hasn't solved its race problem,

that the president has immense power

to talk about and to institute public policy

to address that,

that America hasn't solved its economic inequality problem.

So with Obama, the only question is

does it make any difference being a Black president?

I tell you, Mr. Obama, to deal with the Black agenda

is what every president before you had to do.

How you gonna be any different?

Abraham Lincoln had to deal with race.

George Washington had to deal with race.

LBJ had to deal with race.

How come you're the first president

that ain't got to deal with race?

It wasn't a Black president who passed the Civil Rights Bill.

It wasn't a Black president who passed this--

the Voting Rights Act.

It wasn't a Black president who passed the Fair Housing Act.

It wasn't a Black president

who dealt with affirmative action!

You're gonna be like every other president

deal with race!

(CHEERS, APPLAUDS)

When President Obama was elected there was an expectation

that he might lead some sort of national conversation

around race.

Some of that had to do with the fact that he was a person of color.

And most conversations around race

are often led by people of color.

The expectations might be heightened

because of the speech he gave in Philadelphia

where he talked with candor and with eloquence and honesty

about a subject that a lot of politicians don't talk about.

One of the more interesting things about the First Family

and the conversation around race

is the casual nature with which they have

the conversation that often was missed by people.

Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go.

VALERIE: And they did it in interesting ways

through the way that they used

the architecture of the White House.

♪ ("SIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED, I'M YOURS" BY STEVIE WONDER) ♪

♪ Oh, yeah, baby ♪

♪ Like a fool I went And stayed too long ♪

VALERIE: The people that they brought inside the building.

♪ How does a bastard orphan ♪

♪ Son of a whore And a Scotsman... ♪

VALERIE: Using programs around culture...

♪ Ain't gonna let nobody Turn me around ♪

VALERIE: ...to help America see their country

and to see each other in an interesting way.

-Yeah! -(CROWD APPLAUDS)

-All right. -Yeah!

VALERIE: His presidency begins at a moment

where we are turning the page

to sort of a new era in America

where the demographics are changing.

We're moving closer to becoming a majority, minority culture.

And we have to think about what it means to be American

because for a long time the cultural norm

around Americanness was built around whiteness.

TA-NEHISI: Obama I think gets a lot of flack

from the perspective of the

presidency, first Black presidency

only being symbolic, but, you know, as I argue,

I think people underrate the value of symbols.

I think the way Obama conducted himself

in terms of specifically his relationship

with Black culture...

-Hey, brother. -Hello, sir.

TA-NEHISI: ...communicated a totally different symbol

to other people.

And I think one of the great mistakes was we forgot that.

We forgot that there were other people,

you know, who were watching.

You get an understanding there were other people

who are gonna see that,

like see him playing basketball for instance.

And they would feel a kind of way about that.

VALERIE: As the cultural default changes,

as the conversation changes,

as the demographics of the country change...

that change creates vertigo for some people.

That change makes some people feel really uncomfortable.

DAVID: He knows that there's a huge

number of people out there

talking about taking their country back.

A big slogan of the Tea Party movement.

He knew that his presence in the White House

invariably exacerbated some of the worst elements

in our history that are always there,

and so he was very careful.

Back into the segment tonight, Reality Check,

where we fervently embrace the truth, check one.

Speaking at an NAACP event in March,

Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod

was caught on tape saying something very disturbing.

Seems a white farmer in Georgia had requested

government assistance from Ms. Sherrod.

Breitbart released a video in which

Shirley Sherrod was giving a speech

that appeared to disparage white people.

Wow. Well, that is simply unacceptable,

and Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately.

The federal government cannot have skin color

deciding any assistance.

And the White House flinched.

REPORTER: The reaction was swift and certain.

White House official say the decision to fire

this official was solely at the discretion

of the Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack,

but the President was briefed afterwards,

and we're told, fully supports the decision.

Do you feel as though you had an opportunity

to state your side of the story?

No, I didn't, the administration didn't--

They were not interested in hearing the truth.

No one wanted to hear the truth.

Everyone was running scared so much,

with this story out there.

You hear my words, but you don't realize

he's cut it to make it appear that it had just happened,

I was telling the story from 24 years earlier.

You know, it was just total shock to me

that someone would do what this guy did to me.

This story is about the NAACP,

this story is about the NAACP falsely accusing

the Tea Party of being racist.

Everyone is thinking I'm this terrible,

terrible person.

I've spent my whole life trying to help people.

Racism is used by the left, and the Democratic Party

to shut up opposition, and I am showing you

that people who live in glass houses

should not be throwing stones.

As things unfolded I realized, you know,

I was just a target that he was using

to get at the President.

Only after the fact do they realize that

this video has been doctored.

What appears to be an inflammatory

anti-white speech is actually an empowering speech

about the importance of understanding human beings

as human beings irrespective of what they look like

where they're from, or their background,

and it's coming from a woman...

who had experienced the worst of Southern racism.

It was four to five years ago today

that my father's funeral was held.

I was a young girl at the age of 17

when my father was murdered

by a white man in Baker County.

On the night of my father's death

the thought just came into my head,

you can give up your dream of living in the North,

you can stay in the South, and devote your life

to working for change.

When I made that commitment,

I was making that commitment to Black people.

And to Black people only.

But, you know, God will show you things,

and he'll put things in your path so that...

that you realize that the struggle

-AUDIENCE MEMBER: Right. -...is really about poor people.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: All right, all right.

I decided to use...

the story of my transformation

to try to say to them

if you look at all that I've been through,

my father's murder, and all of this.

If I can place that where it should be...

now and try to work together, why can't we all do it?

KEN: Here you have a Black woman, civil rights activist.

In her family,

you know, is this history of brutality,

just the worst kind of racism that you ever wanna see...

and the notion that the Obama Administration

bought that this woman was perpetuating

some sort of vengeful scheme against white people.

They believed Andrew Breitbart, they believed the guy

who actually was trying to do them in.

It was sad that you would part with Shirley Sherrod,

you know, who, in some really, you know, profound ways

have made it possible for a Black president to exist.

You know, in pursuit of people who don't like you,

who will never like you, who will never believe you,

who will never support you, who have never accepted you.

Last week I had the chance to talk to Shirley Sherrod...

an exemplary woman whose experiences marked

both the challenges we have faced,

and the progress that we've made.

She deserves better than what happened last week.

(CROWD APPLAUDS)

Now, many are to blame for the reaction,

and overreaction that followed these comments

including my own administration.

What I said to Shirley was that the full story

she was trying to tell...

a story about overcoming our own biases,

and recognizing ourselves and folks who on the surface

seem different, is exactly the kind of story

we need to hear in America.

That we can take an opportunity to learn

from our imperfections, and our mistakes,

And I'm confident that we can move forward together...

and make this country a little more perfect

than it was before.

GLENN BECK: This country has spent far too long

worried about scars,

and thinking about the scars and concentrating on the scars.

Today we are going to concentrate,

on the good things in America.

The things that we have accomplished,

and the things that we can do tomorrow.

Oh, huzzah!

REPORTER: Roughly 87,000 people

gathered here at this event today,

that's the largest gathering here on the mall

since President Obama was inaugurated.

SARAH PALIN: It is so humbling to get

to be here with you today patriots.

You who are motivated, and engaged and concerned.

REPORTER: Democrats are worried about an enthusiasm gap,

headed into the fall elections,

and judging by all the conservatives

who are willing to board buses and head here to Washington,

they should be.

The influence of the Tea Party could be the story

of campaign 2010.

The movements have been turning voting anger

into energy coast to coast.

REPORTER: Several Tea Party groups have sparked criticism

for using racist slurs and images

at marches around the country.

Organizers say each group sets its own agenda.

REPORTER 2: The star attraction of today's Tea Party Express rally,

Sarah Palin, whose endorsements

have already helped 25 candidates

win their primary races.

Tea Party Americans, you're winning.

You're winning.

And the left, they just don't know

what the heck to do with you.

Are you fired up, and ready to go?

REPORTER: For the first time since 2008, Michele Obama

joined her husband on the campaign trail.

The first lady's campaign swing is a shot in the arm

for weary democrats,

and her husband whose approval numbers,

especially in battleground states,

continue to sag.

We'll see you. We'll see you.

BARACK: Tuesday is Election Day, and here in Washington,

the talk is all about who will win and who will lose

about parties and politics.

I believe it's the fundamental responsibility

of all who hold elective office to seek out common ground.

All right, everybody have a seat.

JELANI: Time and time again, he's trying to find

some sort of middle ground,

only to realize that there is no middle ground.

-STAFF MEMBER: Hello there, sir. -How are you?

STAFF MEMBER: Good to see you this morning.

JELANI: The Republicans are very much following the electorate.

They don't want him to be successful in any way.

When Mitch McConnell said that his main objective

was to ensure that Barack Obama would be a one-term presidency,

he was reflecting a really significant impulse

among a not small number of white people

in the United States.

That Obama, by virtue in fact of who he was,

was an illegitimate occupant of the White House.

Our current president came out of nowhere.

-Came out of nowhere. -AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kenya!

In fact, I'll go a step further.

The people that went to school with him,

they don't even know, they never saw him,

they don't know who he is, crazy.

I heard “birther” this,

and I keep saying what is “birther”?

To people, like, what is this “birther” stuff?

"You know, because Barack Obama wasn't born in Hawaii."

What do you mean he wasn't born in Hawaii?

Hey guys, I got a whole 300 and something classmates

that we all grew up together, too.

DONALD TRUMP ENTREPRENEUR

People have birth certificates,

he doesn't have a birth certificate.

Now, he may have one, but there's something

on that birth, maybe religion, maybe it says he's a Muslim,

I don't know.

Long ago, the President did release

a certificate of live birth

which many non-partisan watchdog groups say

definitively proves he was born in the US.

Just wanna be clear, I was born in Hawaii.

Donald Trump didn't begin the birther movement,

but he extended it, he gave it legs.

He exacerbated the narrow

and hateful positions

on Obama that the Birthers had adopted.

I heard he had terrible marks, and he ends up in Harvard.

He wrote a book that was better than Ernest Hemingway,

but his second book was written by an average person.

Quite vigorously, and quite explicitly,

Donald Trump had introduced racist rhetoric

into the presidency

by attacking Barack Obama as he did.

Questioning his talent, questioning his skill,

questioning his grades in school,

which is kind of ironic.

And, you know, I wrote many best sellers,

and also number one best sellers including The Art of Deal,

I know something about writing.

-Hello, everybody. -Here's the President.

Here he is!

As many of you have been briefed,

we provided additional information today

about the site of my birth,

and I have to say that over the last two and half years,

I have watched with...

bemusement,

I've been puzzled at the degree

to which this thing just kept on going.

We've had every official in Hawaii,

Democrat and Republican,

every news outlet that has investigated this,

confirmed that yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii

August 4th, 1961 in Kapiolani Hospital.

We posted the...

certification that is given

by the State of Hawaii on the internet

for everybody to see.

I know that there's gonna be a segment of people,

for which no matter what we put out,

this issue will not be put to rest.

But I'm speaking to the vast majority

of the American people as well as to the press.

We do not have time for this kind of silliness,

we got better stuff to do.

I think for a long time he treated those attacks...

...as yet another example of how stupid politics could be.

That politics is a game, that, you know,

it's filled with name-calling and insults.

♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I think that Birther stuff from Trump got to him.

I don't know if it made him angry because he never,

I never really saw him get angry.

My fellow Americans.

But clearly, when we were writing

his speech for the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Mahalo.

We decided to make sure there were a lot of jokes

in that speech about Donald Trump,

And I know that he's taking some flak lately,

but no one is happier, no one is prouder

to put this birth certificate matter

to rest than the Donald.

And I can tell you that the president was delighted

to tell those jokes.

Say what you will about Mr. Trump,

he certainly would bring some change to the White House.

(CROWD CHUCKLING)

I would describe President Obama as a still water that runs deep.

That he has a very cool temperament and demeanor

which requires strength because it's not

that the emotion isn't there, it's just that he knows

that it's important that he keep it under check.

DAVID: There is something very writerly about him.

Very self-examining,

very careful in the way he talks,

and to some people it seems formal,

or arrogant or distant.

It's not the typical fair in Washington.

You know, I think that his self-confidence,

came from nature and nurture.

That self-confidence drove him all the way to the White House

then would get him in trouble in the White House

because it was thought that he didn't need people enough.

KEEGAN KEY: There was something in the zeitgeist

amongst the comedy community

which was he seems so graceful and so competent.

What is it that we're supposed to do to lampoon him?

And I remember when I was on Mad TV,

the only thing I could really wrap my head around

was trying to figure out how to impersonate him.

-(CROWD CHUCKLING) -Folks, we have hope, change,

dignity, you, me.

Yes. Hooray.

It wasn't until Key and Peele,

where Jordan and I were going, okay.

So if he's that reserved,

what's happening on the inside?

We had to look outside of him to find the way into him.

How are others treating him? In particular,

how are white Americans treating him?

How are white Americans

in the other seats of power treating him?

And when that one senator said to him,

you know, "You lie."

That only happened for one reason.

That only happened for one reason.

You could think the President was an absolute buffoon,

and you wouldn't say that if he didn't have melanin

in his skin.

And for him to stand in a podium and go...

That's all he did! That's all he did.

Because you can't win.

If I overreact, I'm an angry Black man.

If I underreact, I'm ineffectual.

And Jordan and I said so if that--

Okay, so we can identify with that.

How must that feel?

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

Now, before I begin,

I just want to say that I know a lot of people out there

seem to think that I don't get angry.

That's just not true. I get angry a lot.

It's just the way I express passion

is different from most.

So, just so there's no more confusion,

we've hired Luther here to be my anger translator.

-Luther. -Hi.

And that's where we came up with Luther,

with him being able to express his anger,

and his dissatisfaction through a surrogate.

I just want to say to my critics,

I hear your voices, and I'm aware of your concerns.

So maybe you can chill the hell out for like a second,

then maybe I can focus on some shit, you know?

That goes for everybody,

including members of the Tea Party.

Don't even get me started

on these motherfuckers right here.

I want to assure you, that we will be looking

for new compromises with the GOP

in the months ahead.

And you know these motherfuckers gonna say no

before I can even suggest some shit.

It's not an impersonation more than is an account

of how he's living through the world,

and through a small piece of problem-solving.

How can we problem-solve, and make his life easier?

I know, we'll do the screaming for him.

-I am not a Muslim. -And then you can't say,

"Told you. See? Look, uppity angry Black man."

But he's not. Luther's the angry uppity Black man.

REPORTER: Four years ago, Springfield.

-Cold. -It was freezing.

You declared your candidacy, and you said,

"The reason we've not met our challenges

is a failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics...

The ease of which we're distracted

by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance

of tough decisions, our preference

for scoring cheap political points

instead of rolling up our sleeves,

and building a working consensus,

to tackle the big problems of America.

REPORTER: Those were eloquent words, and true words.

Unfortunately, they're still largely true today.

Did you overpromise?

Did you underestimate how difficult this was gonna be?

I didn't overpromise, and I didn't underestimate

how tough this was gonna be.

I always believed that this was a long-term project.

The one thing I've prided myself on before I was president,

and it turns out that continues to be true as president,

I'm a persistent son of a gun.

I just stay at it,

and I'm just gonna keep on staying at it

as long as I'm in this office, and we're gonna get it right.

And America will succeed.

I am absolutely confident about that.

Man, Trayvon Martin was...

Trayvon Martin was such a sad situation,

simply because when you hear that 911 call...

That's everything that we as Black people,

especially Black men.

That's everything we tell you we experience,

but you hear it from the person who's actually doing it to us.

The racial profiling, the stereotyping,

seeing us in the neighborhood thinking we don't belong.

That's what we tell people we're experiencing,

but nobody believes it until they see it.

REPORTER 1: Was it self-defense,

or an unjustified overreaction?

That's the central question raised by the recent shooting

of a 17-year-old teenager in Florida by a member

of a neighborhood watch group.

REPORTER 2: Police got here within a minute

and found Trayvon Martin shot dead.

REPORTER 3: This shooter, George Zimmerman,

was questioned, but has not been arrested.

He holds a license to carry a concealed weapon,

and claims he fired in self-defense.

But the teen's family disputes that claim.

INTERVIEWER: If your son had been white,

do you think he would have been shot and killed that day?

-No. -Arrest Zimmerman now.

REPORTER 4: Outrage over the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin

is spreading now around the country.

REPORTER 5: Late last night, the Department of Justice

announced that their civil rights division

and the FBI are opening a thorough

and independent investigation.

Our son is your son.

-Yes. -Hallelujah.

I want you guys to stand up for justice,

-and stand up for what's right. -Yeah!

Mr. President, will you comment on the Trayvon Martin case, sir?

Well, I'm the head of the executive branch,

and the Attorney General reports to me.

So, I got to be careful about my statements

to make sure that we're not impairing any investigation

that's taking place right now.

But obviously, this is a tragedy.

I can only imagine

what these parents are going through.

And when I think about this boy...

I think about my own kids.

You know, if I had son, he'd look like Trayvon.

And, you know, I think they are right to expect

that all of us, as Americans, are going to take this

with the seriousness it deserves,

and that we're going to get to the bottom

of exactly what happened.

All right. Thank you.

BRODERICK JOHNSON: At a very personal level,

what happened to Trayvon Martin, really affected President Obama.

And it's something that I as a,

you know, an African American man,

think about all the time.

That could have been one of my son's very easily.

He saw it in those very stark personal terms

and he talked about it that way.

CHARLAMAGNE: To us regular everyday people,

Trayvon Martin was a huge deal. Huge deal.

How many presidents would acknowledge that

on any given Sunday?

So, for him to do that, you know,

it was just a reminder, like, yo, that's a Black man.

♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois,

Mr. Rush, for five minutes

BOBBY RUSH: I thought that something was missing...

...in his response.

Racial profiling has to stop, Mr. Speaker,

just because someone wears a hoodie,

does not make them a hoodlum.

The Bible teaches us, Mr. Speaker.

In the book of Micah 6:68...

GREGG HARPER: Member will-- The member will sustain.

-...these words. -(GAVEL POUNDS)

-The member will... -These words.

-The member... -"He had shown you, O man..."

-The member will suspend. -"...what is good."

-The chair must remind members... -"What does not--"

-...of Clause 5 of Rule 17. -"What does the Lord require of you..."

-The member got an order. -"...but to do justly

and to love mercy?"

My statement was delivered

to those young people out there who was demonstrating.

-What do we want? -Justice!

BOBBY: You know, some of us

feel as though that's what we need.

The assailant has not been charged,

something wrong with that.

We want arrest! We want arrest!

VALERIE JARRETT: President Obama was acutely aware

of the frustrations, and many quarters

that wanted him to be much more

forward-leaning and confrontational.

SHERRILYN: The president doesn't have the power

to go and order someone's arrest.

The president doesn't have that power.

We don't have a king.

We have a justice system that is deeply imperfect.

But he does have the power to just speak.

To speak in a way that tells us that we are seen,

that reminds us that he is human,

that reminds us that he understands

the shared nature of our struggle.

JELANI: I think that Barack Obama

almost inevitably was gonna be vested with

the weight of Black people's claim

on American society.

Everything has been denied to us...

starting with the right to even exist as free people.

And the lesson had been the less you talk openly

about race, the better.

Then Trayvon Martin was killed.

HENRY: W. E. B. Du Bois in one of the classics

of the Black tradition called The Souls of Black Folk

defined the double consciousness

of every African American.

And Du Bois said, "One ever feels his two-ness,

an American, a Negro.

Two warring ideals in one dark body."

There never has been a more classic example

of Du Bois's dilemma than Barack Obama

in the White House.

Bit by bit, he allows himself more sense of grief and outrage.

In the parameters of what he can...

see as possible as president.

He is President of the United States.

He is not a community activist,

he's not the leader of a social movement

to the frustration of many.

He's the President of the United States.

(CROWD CHEERS, APPLAUDS)

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

CROWD: Four more years! Four more years!

BARRACK: We have come too far

to abandon the change we fought for these past few years.

We have to move forward...

to the future we imagined in 2008,

where everyone gets a fair shot,

and everyone does their fair share,

and everyone plays by the same rules.

That's the choice in this election

and that's why I'm running for a second term

as President of the United States.

♪ (UPLIFTING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

REPORTER 6: Why do you think you deserve to be re-elected?

What did you accomplish?

Not only saving this country from a great depression,

not only saving the auto industry,

but putting in place a system in which

that we're gonna start lowering health care costs,

ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

This is done.

Decimating Al-Qaeda, including Bin Laden.

But when it comes to the economy,

we've got a lot more work to do, and we're gonna keep on at it.

REPORTER 7: Thanks to large leads among women, Hispanics,

and even independents,

the President begins with a 49-43 advantage

over presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney.

But it's a six-point margin

that is, by no means, insurmountable.

Even if you like Barack Obama, we can't afford Barack Obama.

It's time to get someone that'll get this economy going,

and put the American people back to work

with good jobs and rising incomes.

REPORTER 8: A lot of African Americans

in this country are getting flat-out crushed

in this economy.

REPORTER 9: In 2008, African Americans

went to the polls in record numbers

but some people in the Black community feeling

a sense of disappointment now. The question is,

can the president hold on to the Black vote?

(CROWD CHEERING)

NEWS ANCHOR: Do you think there's a reasonable chance

that you could lose this election?

Oh, absolutely, I mean, this is gonna be a close race.

I take nothing for granted.

I'm gonna be working my tail off,

trying to present a clear choice to the American people.

The one thing I hope I'm able to communicate

in this campaign is that I'm not tired,

that I am, as eager every morning,

and as determined as I've ever been to work

as hard as I can on behalf of the American people.

-♪ (UPLIFTING MUSIC FADES) ♪ -(CROWD CHEERING, CHANTING)

Four more years! Four more years!

Four more years! Four more years!

Four more years! Four more years...

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Tonight...

more than 200 years after a former colony

won the right to determine its own destiny...

the task of perfecting our union moves forward.

♪ (INSPIRING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, the re-elected President

of the United States of America.

(CROWD CHEERS)

You know, I tried to picture myself

when I was your age,

and I first moved to Chicago at the age of 25.

And I had this vague inkling

about making a difference.

I didn't really know how to do it.

It's not that you guys actually remind me of myself,

it's the fact that you are so much better than I was.

You're just gonna do great things.

And that's why even before last night's results,

I felt that the work that I have done...

in running for office had come full circle...

because what you guys have done means that the work

that I'm doing is important.

(CAMERAS SHUTTER CLICKING)

And I'm really proud of that.

I'm really proud of all of you.

And...

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

-(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING) -And what you describe...

President Obama very quickly developed this moniker,

"No-drama Obama,"

and he was seen as being very cool and very aloof.

Thank you, guys.

MICHELLE: He was a president

who shed tears.

He wasn't the first president to shed tears...

but he did so on several occasions

without apology.

♪ (INSPIRING MUSIC FADES) ♪

REPORTER: Connecticut State Police and SWAT teams

are now responding to a school shooting

at an elementary school in Newtown.

As of 10:30 Eastern, students were still being led,

as you see the students here, led from the school

by their teachers.

BARACK: I know there's not a parent in America

who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.

The majority of those who died today were children...

beautiful little kids between the ages

of five and ten years old.

(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)

♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I think he-- he's level.

He's an extremely level dude.

You know, he don't get too hot

and he don't get, you know, too cold.

At the same time, he's a human being.

This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know

every parent in America will do,

which is hug our children a little tighter,

and we'll tell them that we love them,

and we'll remind each other how deeply we love one another.

But there are families in Connecticut

who cannot do that tonight.

And they need all of us right now.

Sandy Hook is, you know, I mean, you have a massacre,

you know, of children.

And the country is paralyzed in its ability

to do anything about it.

REPORTER: A poignant reminder today

of the toll that gun violence is taking on this nation.

Today, the First Lady was among those who gathered

in Chicago, to say goodbye to Hadiya Pendleton,

the teenager who was killed in a random shooting just a week

after performing at the president's inauguration.

I'm Hadiya from year 2015.

She was shot and killed in a place that's not too far

from where we all live on the south side of Chicago.

Hadiya Pendleton was me...

and I was her.

But I got to grow up.

MARTY: It made us all feel the need for...

fixing some of these deeply rooted problems.

BARACK: A few months ago,

in response to too many tragedies,

this country took up the cause of protecting

more of our people from gun violence.

Families that know unspeakable grief

summoned the courage to petition their elected leaders.

A few minutes ago, a minority in the United States Senate

decided it wasn't worth it.

They blocked common-sense gun reforms,

even while these families looked on

from the Senate Gallery.

There were no coherent arguments

as to why we wouldn't do this. It came down to politics.

So, all in all this was a pretty shameful day

for Washington.

♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC FADES) ♪

CLERK: In the circuit court of the 18th Judicial Circuit

in and for Seminole County, Florida,

State of Florida versus George Zimmerman.

Verdict. We the jury find George Zimmerman not guilty.

-♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(MOB CLAMORING)

Shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida,

almost 17 months ago opened up emotional questions

about racial profiling,

and about a person's right to defend themselves.

Not one more!

REPORTER: It also sparks spirited demands for justice.

Now that justice has spoken,

those conversations have maybe even grown louder

as thousands have taken to the streets

in cities coast-to-coast.

Obama, I hope that you are looking.

-I hope that you are looking. -You know, I hope he burn hell!

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

To see George Zimmerman get off, it's like...

I don't know what more

y'all needed to see?

That was a tough one to swallow.

(MOB CLAMORING)

REPORTER: There were calls for President Obama

to speak out in the wake of the verdict all week,

especially from within the African American community,

and White House officials tell me

that President Obama was watching the reaction

to the verdict since it came down last weekend.

So, he surprised us all by stepping behind the podium

this afternoon.

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC FADES) ♪

The reason I actually wanted to come out today

is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue

that obviously has gotten a lot of attention

over the course of the last week,

the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling.

-(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING) -You know...

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

BARACK: ...when Trayvon Martin was first shot,

I said that this could have been my son.

Another way of saying that is,

Trayvon Martin could've been me 35 years ago.

And when you think about why,

in the African American community at least,

there's a lot of pain around what happened here,

I think it's important to recognize that...

the African American community is looking

at this issue through a set of experiences

and a history that...

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

BARACK: ...that doesn't go away.

There are very few African American men

in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed

when they were shopping in a department store.

That includes me.

There are very few African American men

who haven't had the experience of walking across the street,

and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.

And those sets of experiences inform

how the African American community interprets...

what happened one night in Florida.

(MOB CHANTS)

BARACK: I think it's understandable

that there have been demonstrations,

and vigils and protests.

Not one more!

BARACK: But beyond protests or vigils, the question is,

are there some concrete things that we might be able to do?

We need to spend some time in thinking

about how do we bolster and reinforce

our African American boys.

And is there more that we can do to...

give them a sense that...

their country cares about them?

ANTHONY PETERSON: You never know

when people sign your high school yearbook

who's gonna be signing it.

I didn't know that I was gonna go to school

with someone who was gonna be president.

And certainly didn't think,

Barry Obama would be that person,

not because of any level of competence

but because he was gonna be a basketball player.

So, this is what he wrote in my yearbook.

He says, "Tony, man, I sure am glad I got to know you

before you left, all those ethnic corners,

trips to the snack bar, and playing ball

made the year a lot more enjoyable."

"Anyway, it's been great knowing you

and I hope we keep in touch.

Good luck in everything you do, and get that law degree.

Someday when I'm an all-pro basketballer

and I want sue my team for my money,

I'll call on you. Friends always, Barry."

I have some friends who do character education

in high schools and most of these kids

we're talking about are African American students,

and they sometimes have me come out and bring my yearbook.

The question that gets asked is, "Do you think this guy

who wrote this became an NBA player?"

And they'll say, "No," because everybody wants

to be an NBA player and only a handful of people get there.

And the next question that's asked is,

"What do you think happened to this guy?"

And the answer usually is,

he's either in jail or he's dead.

-Good afternoon. -Good afternoon.

My name is Christian Champagne.

I'm 18. I'm a senior currently at High Park Academy.

Last February, President Obama sat down with us

and shared his story.

And to my surprise, he was just like me,

growing up without a father.

And sometimes not too concerned with school.

-(CROWD LAUGHING) -(LAUGHS)

That's true.

♪ (INSPIRING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

DAVID: The most compelling interactions

I ever saw Barack Obama have was with young, Black men,

particularly young, Black men who didn't have fathers

like he didn't have a father.

MICHELLE: He was on the South Side of Chicago,

and he's sitting in a circle

and he's talking to these young men,

and he's talking about his own life.

And he's talking about his own struggles,

and his search for confidence.

And he said, you know, I'm you.

That's not something

that you traditionally have heard

a president say to a roomful of young Black men.

Meeting the President, and have him tell me

that my life now is not different

from the way his was

made me realize I have potential too.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now have the honor

of introducing you

to the President of the United States.

-(CROWD CHEERS APPLAUDS) -Good job. Good job.

I'm proud of you, man.

BRODERICK: I remember the very distinct conversation

that he and I had not long after he'd been inaugurated

for the second term. And he said, you know,

in this second term, I'm gonna do something.

Recognizing that historically

countless boys and young men of color especially

are shut out of opportunities in this country.

And recognizing that this country is not

what it should be.

♪ (INSPIRING MUSIC FADES) ♪

OBAMA: Fifty years after Dr. King talked

about his dream for America's children,

the stubborn fact is, that the life chances

the average Black or brown child in this country

lags behind by almost every measure

and is worse for boys and young men.

If you're African American,

there's about one in two chance you grow up

without a father in your house.

We know that boys who grew up without a father

are more likely to be poor,

more likely to underperform in school.

There's a higher chance you end up

in the criminal justice system.

And a far higher chance that you are the victim

of a violent crime.

And all of this translates into a higher unemployment rates

and poverty rates as adults.

These statistics should break our hearts,

and they should compel us to act.

And that's what My Brother's Keeper

is all about.

If we help these wonderful, young men

become better husbands and fathers,

and well-educated, hardworking, good citizens...

then not only will they contribute

to the growth, and prosperity of this country

but they will pass on those lessons

onto their children,

onto their grandchildren.

And this country will be richer and stronger for it

for generations to come.

So, let's get going. Thank you, God bless you.

God bless the United States of America.

(CROWD APPLAUDS)

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

CROWD: (CHANTING) No justice, no peace!

-No justice, no peace! -No justice, no peace!

-No justice, no peace! -No justice, no peace!

REPORTER 1: Tensions are high after an unarmed teenager

was shot dead by a police officer.

REPORTER 2: Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, just days away

from starting college, lay dead in the street.

The teen's mother, inconsolable.

Why? Why did I do it? Why?

LEZLEY MCSPADDEN: You took my son away from me.

You know how hard it was for me to get him

to stay in school and graduate?

You know how many Black men graduate?

Not many.

Because you bring them down of this type of level

where they feel like

I don't got nothing to live for anyway.

They're gonna try to take me out anyway.

CROWD: (CHANTING) No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace!

DERAY MCKESSON: When I think about Black Lives Matter,

what is always important to remember

is that there is no movement without what happened

in Ferguson, that like that is the spark,

it is the impetus.

-Hands up. Hands up. -Don't shoot! Don't shoot!

DERAY: It was a movement born of the police

killing people on the street,

that is we got people in the street,

it's what kept people in the street.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

It was organic, and the protest spread organically

across the country.

-Sixteen shots. Sixteen shots. -Sixteen shots. Sixteen shots.

REPORTER: Across the country this weekend,

Americans taking to the streets

over what has become a pressing national issue.

The use of lethal force by police.

Protests have been going on from coast to coast

over a series of controversial cases.

♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

ELIZABETH: I think about all of these young people

who have grown up watching the violation of young,

Black men on their phones

over and over and over, and over again,

being inundated, with their vulnerability.

(MOB CLAMORING)

DERAY: In August, September, October, and November 2014,

there were a lot of people who didn't believe us.

There were a lot of people who thought

it was interesting what was happening

in the street, but they thought we were being dramatic.

I remember people telling us,

"Don't bring this to their city,"

and we're like, "What you mean?

The police are killing people in your city,

we don't have to bring it there,

like, we're just highlighting this,

like we didn't do this."

ELIZABETH: I think that so many of the young people of this country

are in a post-traumatic depression.

I think it's a generation,

and I think we have to really, really understand and listen

to what those young people are dealing with

because we don't yet have answers

for how to keep them safe.

And how to have their humanity recognized

in their brown male bodies.

NEWS ANCHOR: You didn't start this.

This problem didn't begin under your watch.

This is incredibly persistent and pervasive.

-Yeah. -But how much of it

does your administration feel you're responsible

for making an impact on?

Well, I think an enormous amount,

not just because as president you're always responsible

for what happens in this country

and you got to be part of the solution,

not part of the problem.

But because of my particular

experiences that I bring to this office.

You know, part of the reason I got into politics

was to figure out how can I

bridge some of those gaps and understandings,

so that the larger country understands this is not just

a Black problem or a brown problem,

this is an American problem.

REPORTER 1: Today we finally got the full and damning report

from the feds that alleges in detail the pattern

of racial bias among authorities in Ferguson, Missouri.

African Americans representing 93 percent of arrests,

90 percent or citations, 85 percent of all traffic stops

and 88 percent of all use of force incidents.

REPORTER 2: The report also detailing racist emails

sent by city employees.

One describing the President of the United States

as a chimpanzee.

There are places and moments in America

where this nation's destiny has been decided.

Selma is such a place.

We gather here to honor the courage

of ordinary Americans

willing to endure billy clubs

and the chastening rod,

tear gas and the trampling hoof.

Men and women who despite the gush of blood

and splintered bone would stay true

to their north star and keep marching towards justice.

-What do we want? -Justice.

-When do we want it? -Now.

BARACK: If Selma taught us anything,

it's that our work is never done.

CROWD: No racist NYPD!

The American experiment in self-government

gives work and purpose to each generation.

And this is work for all Americans,

not just some, not just whites,

not just Blacks.

If we want to honor the courage of those who marched that day,

then all of us are called to possess

their moral imagination.

All of us will need to feel

as they did the fierce urgency of now.

Racism is not just a burden for Black people.

It will destroy us all, it will consume us all.

CROWD: I am Eric Garner.

I am Eric Garner.

CORNEL: The very notion that Black people

are human beings at the deepest level

is still news for too many people,

a lot of my fellow citizens have yet to get that memo.

ALL: No more.

REPORTER: The church couldn't hold all the people

who turned out today for the funeral of Walter Scott.

He is the African American man shot and killed last weekend

running from his car by the white police officer

who pulled him over in South Carolina.

CROWDS: (CHANTS) No justice. No peace!

America has never admitted or come to grips with,

how racism is sewn into the fabric of the country.

It's a ghost from our past that we have not dealt with.

Freddie! Freddie! Freddie!

REPORTER 1: This morning another case of the possible use

of excessive force by police against a Black suspect.

REPORTER 2: That suspect Freddie Gray would end up

with a severed spine, he would later die.

BOBBY: This phenomena that we were living

in a post-racial society.

Where did all this stupid rhetoric come from?

Who hoisted that up on the body of politics?

And who accepts that nonsense?

You know, how do you erase history?

HENRY: White supremacy is in the DNA

of the American people.

And the myth of a post-racial America

because of the election of a Black man

to the White House let us...

unfortunately put our guard down.

JELANI: June 17th, 2015

Dylann Roof enters the sanctuary of the Emanuel AME Church

in Charleston, South Carolina.

He attends bible study

and at the conclusion of bible study he...

draws a .45 caliber Glock,

and murders nine people in the church.

In the midst of the shooting spree,

a young man by the name of Tywanza Sanders

who has already been shot says to him,

"You don't have to do this, we mean you no harm."

In response, Roof says, "I have to do this

because you all are raping our women,

and taking over the world."

And it wasn't coincidental that at the same time

there was a Black man occupying the White House.

Michelle and I know several members

of Emanuel AME Church.

We knew their pastor Reverend Clementa Pinckney

who along with eight others gathered in prayer

and fellowship, and was murdered last night.

The fact that this took place in a Black church

obviously also raises questions

about a dark part of our history.

This is not the first time that Black churches

have been attacked and we know

that hatred across races and faiths

pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.

SHERRILYN: The work to defeat racism, and the work of civil rights

is not a story of relentless progress.

It's just not. There is progress.

There are also moments that crystalize

the fragile nature of the progress you've made.

And this was one of them.

JUDGE: You are representing the family of Ethel Lance,

-is that correct? -NADINE COLLIER: Yes.

JUDGE: And you are whom, ma'am?

-NADINE: The daughter. -JUDGE: The daughter.

I'm listening.

NADINE: I just want everybody to know,

to you, I forgive you.

You took something very precious away from me.

I will never talk to her ever again.

I will never be able to hold her again.

But I forgive you.

MICHAEL: The nation is taken aback

by the immediacy of the gesture of forgiveness.

It's a remarkable display of Black humanity.

The willingness to forgive even the most heinous

forms of white supremacy and violence

in the name of the God that they serve.

(CROWD APPLAUDS)

JOHN: The church was packed.

It was...

unbelievable, unbelievable sea of humanity.

Black people, white people, young, old,

elected officials, non-elected officials,

just people.

It was an unbelievable feeling.

You can see it on the face of President Barack Obama...

that he knew...

that he was on a mission...

to somehow get all Americans

to believe that we have to do our best

to create a sense of community, a sense of family.

Giving all praise and honor to God.

We are here today to remember a man of God

who live by faith.

A man who believed in things not seen.

Slain in his sanctuary...

with eight wonderful members of his flock.

To the families of the fallen,

the nation shares in your grief.

Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church.

The church is,

and always has been the center of African American life.

That's right.

BARACK: We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney

and eight others knew all of this history.

But he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act.

An act that he presumed would deepen divisions

that trace back to our nation's original sin.

Oh, but God works in mysterious ways.

(CROWD CHEERS, APPLAUDS)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, sir!

He didn't know he was being used by God.

(ALL CHEER, APPLAUD)

BARACK: Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer

could not see the grace

surrounding Reverend Pinckney,

and that bible study group.

CROWD: Amen.

The light of love

that shown as they opened the church doors

-and invited a stranger... -CROWD: Yeah.

...to join in their prayer circle.

CROWD: Yes, sir!

BARACK: Reverent Pinckney once said,

"Across the south we have a deep appreciation of history."

"We haven't always had a deep appreciation

of each other's history."

-Yeah. -Wow.

BARACK: What is true in the South is true for America.

He knew that the path of grace

involves an open mind.

But more importantly an open heart.

That's what I felt this week.

An open heart.

That, more than any particular policy or analysis...

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's right.

BARACK: ...is what's called upon right now, I think.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah.

If we can find that grace,

-anything is possible. -Yeah, come on!

If we can tap that grace,

everything can change.

Amazing grace.

Amazing grace.

♪ (SINGING "AMAZING GRACE") ♪

♪ Amazing grace ♪

♪ How sweet the sound ♪

♪ That saved ♪

♪ A wretch like me ♪

♪ I once ♪

♪ Was lost ♪

♪ But now ♪

♪ I'm found ♪

♪ Was blind ♪

♪ But now ♪

♪ I see ♪

SHERRILYN: There's a lot that can't be said

about what that moment, what this killing meant to us,

how devastating this was to us.

And how we had to organize ourselves

as our forebears have had to do many times in the past

not to allow our sense of who we are

and who we will be in this country

to be defined by these moments.

And it was all in that song.

MICHAEL: No clearer statement can be made

all of the reluctance has melted away,

all of the hymn hawing, and the fits and starts,

the gives and takes, all dismissed.

And now a clear vision of redemption.

MARTY: He reflected who we really are as a country.

And I think that's the thing about him

is that he represents...

to the people in this country everything that's good about us.

It's not about him, it's what...

we see in him that represents us

in who we are, in who we aspire to be.

Sadly, the American dream,

is dead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Bring it back!

But if I get elected president,

I will bring it back

bigger and better

and stronger than ever before

and we will make America great again.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

-(CROWD CHEERING) -♪ (TUNE FADES) ♪

DAVID: When a president retires after two terms,

that president sets the stage for the next.

Good morning.

In the sense that the country

never looks, no matter how popular the president is,

for the replica of what they have.

They generally look for the remedy.

By that measure

there's no one who's a greater antithesis

to Barack Obama than Donald Trump.

Build that wall! Build that wall!

REPORTER: What do you think of Donald Trump?

Well, I think that he...

is a great publicity seeker.

Build that wall.

REPORTER: Do you think he's running out of steam?

I mean, do you think he's gonna disappear?

You know, I'll leave it up to the pundits

to make that determination.

I don't think he'll end up being president

of the United States.

(CROWD CHEERS, APPLAUDS)

Donald Trump caught into a backlash fervor

of the fears, unfounded fears, of many people,

and striking on simplistic things

like they're not one of us,

we need to go back to old America,

make America great.

And no one thought that that could work.

When they started saying by the year 20-something

there'd be more people of color,

I kinda knew there would be a backlash...

but I didn't know where it was gonna come from.

Trump, he spoke that language,

he spoke directly to the racists.

He spoke directly to the bigots,

he knew exactly what they were feeling

because he was feeling it.

He know exactly how he felt seeing that Black man every day.

TA-NEHISI: I think in general

we deeply underestimate the power of hate.

You know, of a particular kind of politics

that, you know, takes as its base,

I'm not you, you live over there,

I live over here,

I'm with my people, you're with yours.

Now, there were a lot things that had to happen,

you know, in order for Trump to be president.

But I think like he just missed

the extent to which what Trump was saying

was in fact in deep concert

with folks that he had been facing

for the past eight years.

(CROWD CLAMORS)

BARACK: I do think that the country

is inexorably changing.

I believe in all kinds of positive ways.

But I do think that when you combine

the demographic change

with all the economic stressors

that people have been going through...

Build the wall! Build the wall!

BARACK: ...that means that there's gonna be

potential anger, frustration, fear.

Some of it justified but just misdirected.

And I think that somebody like Mr. Trump

is taking advantage of that.

There are some people that are, just stone cold racists.

We know that.

But there are a lot of people also who feel...

and are to some degree or another,

feel like they're on the losing end of the stick.

There are a lot of people

who rose to the bait I would say.

The encouragement of the kind of PR mastery of Trump.

Trump made it into an us and them,

and Black and white.

There's no question

that he had a self-consciousness of

a path to whipping up resentment.

And Obama was a Black president.

♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

JELANI: Toward the end of Obama's presidency

I have received an invitation to what was billed

as a celebration of Black music at the White House.

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

TA-NEHISI: It was Bell Biv DeVoe, De La Soul, Common,

although Bradley Cooper was there.

It was the wildest thing.

Anyway, so but besides Bradley Cooper,

everybody was Black.

(CROWD CHEERS, APPLAUDS)

Hello, everybody.

And it's at the end, you know, of Obama's presidency

and people know it's the end.

Well, you can tell what kind of night this is.

(CROWD CHEERING)

That was not John Philip Sousa right there.

(CROWD CHUCKLES)

This is our final musical evening

as President and First Lady.

CROWD: Aw!

I know.

(CROWD CHUCKLES)

It's gonna be all right.

(CROWD CHUCKLES)

It became very clear that this was on the one hand

a recognition of African American contributions

to American musical culture.

♪ (SONG ENDS ABRUPTLY) ♪

Give it up, ladies and gentlemen for De La Soul.

We love you, Mr. President, Mrs. President.

JELANI: But another sense, it was really a punctuation

for what the Obamas had represented

in the United States for the previous eight years.

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: I like to think about

the Obama presidency

for its, what I would call, real symbolic power.

The ways that

not only that man but that family

stood on the world stage and showed us

that being a whole person

means loving people and belonging to people

and being responsible to people.

The most important thing we can all do

is to treat each other with kindness and respect.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

ELIZABETH: Just showing us in his persona

the joy of living,

the love of music, the love of children,

the love of connecting with other human beings.

-Fired up -Fired up

-Ready to go -Ready to go

I think all of that stood for something,

and stands for something.

What's your name? How old are you?

There was a sense of decorum

and ethics and honesty,

and commitment to the country that suffused

the entire White House.

I'm proud of the way he conducted himself

as President of the United States,

that's no small thing.

My president.

My president!

TA-NEHISI: There are now white children

who earliest memories

of any sort of president is a Black guy.

I don't think that's small.

I don't think that's small at all.

Because I think your ability to imagine

who can't occupy the highest levels,

you know, in society

directly informs your ability to see people as human.

That's not the whole battle, that's not everything

but it certainly is a component.

MARTY: To me,

the most important thing is that Barack Obama won,

and Barack Obama won twice.

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)

MARTY: Now, he might argue differently

he's a policy guy,

and he might argue healthcare and he might argue

saving the banking industry, and saving the auto industry,

and ending the wars in the Middle East...

but to me the biggest accomplishment

was that he won,

because it means something about this country,

and our country's capacity

to pursue becoming a more perfect union.

CROWD: (CHANTING) Four more years!

-Four more years! -BARACK: I can't do that.

CROWD: Four more years! Four more years!

-(LAUGHS) -CROWD: Four more years! Four more years!

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you!

Now, this is where I learned that change only happens

when ordinary people get involved,

and they get engaged.

And they come together to demand it.

After eight years as your president,

I still believe that.

And it's not just my belief...

(CROWD CHEERING)

...it's the beating heart of our American idea,

our bold experiment in self-government...

that we the people

through the instrument of our democracy...

can form a more perfect union.

Yes, our progress has been uneven.

The work of democracy has always been hard.

It's always been contentious.

Sometimes it's been bloody.

Our constitution is a remarkable...

beautiful gift.

But it's really...

just a piece of parchment.

It has no power on its own.

We the people give it power.

(CROWD CHEERING)

We the people give it meaning

with our participation,

and with the choices that we make.

And the alliances that we forge,

whether or not we stand up for our freedoms,

whether or not we respect, and enforce the rule of law.

That's up to us.

For all our outward differences...

we in fact all share the same proud title,

the most important office in a democracy.

Citizen.

Citizen.

So you see,

that's what our democracy demands.

♪ (MUSICAL SOUND WAVE) ♪

It needs you.

Not just when there's an election,

not just when your own narrow interest is at stake,

but over the full span of a lifetime.

My fellow Americans...

it has been the honor of my life to serve you.

I won't stop.

In fact, I will be right there with you

as a citizen...

(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDS)

...for all my remaining days.

But for now, whether you are young,

or whether you're young at heart,

I do have one final ask of you as your president,

the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me

eight years ago.

I'm asking you to believe,

not in my ability to bring about change, but in yours.

I'm asking you to hold fast to that faith

written into our founding documents,

that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists,

that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders

and those who march for justice...

that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags

from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon,

a creed at the core of every American

whose story is not yet written.

Yes, we can.

(CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)

BARACK: Yes, we did.

Yes, we can.

Thank you, God bless you.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.

Thank you.

♪ (TUNE CONCLUDES) ♪

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪