“America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We the people.’ 'We shall overcome.’ ‘Yes, we can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”
Shepard Fairey's Obama poster, 2008
Those words are taken from President Barack Obama’s poignant speech in Selma in 2015 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches. The words will be carved into the top part of the exterior of the museum at the Obama Presidential Center rising now in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side. In the years ahead, visitors will be able to look out through the letters at the South and West Sides of the city, focusing on the work that still remains to be done for all the people.
One week before the Nov. 5 presidential election — which could herald another step forward for the nation and the people, or not — the Obama Foundation hosted a group of Northwestern University Medill School MSJ journalism students and two professors, Elizabeth Shogren and me, for briefings on the progress being made on the Obama Presidential Center. It will be a global center for change.
Our thanks go out to the Foundation’s experienced officials, Chris Crater and Marquis Miller, for sharing their briefings, wisdom and planning with our students during our afternoon in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago. Walking down to the site of the Obama Presidential Center afterward, and seeing the site again, continuing its progress, is always moving, especially now that the buildings and structures are rising and taking shape.
Reading the former president’s words to the students was my favorite part of the day, reminding them of what Obama wants the world to remember when they visit the places and neighborhoods that long ago helped shape his vision of community service and public service — the importance of “we the people” and the possibility and opportunity we all still have to shape a better future for all of them — and to forge a more perfect union.
—Storer Rowley
