A Rare Look at the Day the Obama Era Flooded Back to Chicago

For one day in Chicago, the Obama era came flooding back.

The people who believed in Barack Obama when he was still running for Senate like Stevie Wonder, alongside the advisers who helped carry him to the White House. There were elected officials still in the middle of political fights, like state Rep. Shomari Figures, who has been battling over redistricting in Tennessee, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who quietly slipped backstage during the ceremony as she faces a tough re-election race. There were cultural celebrities too, like Tyler Perry, Shonda Rhimes, Quinta Brunson, Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union. Oprah Winfrey sat beside Gayle King in the front row, while Stephen Colbert was stopped again and again for selfies. Tom Hanks called it a moment of “hope.” And when former first lady Michelle Obama gave her husband his flowers on stage, there wasn’t a shortage of dry eyes amongst the crowd.

But beneath the celebration where Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson and Marc Anthony performed and where Obama alum staffers hugged each other like a family reunion, there was a harder truth in the air. The optimism that defined Obama’s rise feels harder to hold onto now. The Root spoke with several attendees about what it means to move forward when democracy feels so fragile now.

Eric Holder, the first African American to serve as the United States Attorney General from 2009 to 2015, did not mince words. The opening of the center was not just a moment to reflect on history but was a reminder that progress has always required sacrifice and a refusal to give in.

“There’s no time to be weary,” Holder said. “And that’s something that really angers me, this notion that somehow people are weary.”

“You think John Lewis was weary? You think Martin Luther King was weary? You think Fannie Lou Hamer was weary?” he said. “You might be tired, but you take a nap, get some sleep, and then get up the next day and commit yourself to the fight.”

Potential 2028 presidential hopeful California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged people to remember the spirit of progress. “Listen to Michelle. Listen to Barack Obama. Very full stop,” Newsom said.

“We’re so divided and so corrosive, our politics. Everybody’s at each other’s throats. Everyone feels alone. They don’t feel like they have dignity, and they’re lonely. And this is a reminder of what we can be again.”

Others looked to the past for inspiration. “Coretta Scott King said that freedom is never really won,” Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks said. “You have to fight for it and win it in every generation.”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said the opening of the center belonged to the ancestors who fought for Black freedom.

“Can you imagine the ancestors, how they’re looking down from heaven?” Crump said. “The ones who sacrificed for us through slavery, through Jim Crow, through the Civil Rights Era.”

To the Black people who feel apathetic about the state of the country, Crump invoked Frederick Douglass.

“Without struggle, there could be no progress,” Crump said.

“As long as we refuse to surrender, as long as we refuse to wave the white flag, that means our children have a better chance at a better future. And our Black children are worth the fight.”