Politics

Barack Obama took the oath of office today as the 44th president of the United States and pledged to “begin again the work of remaking America.” Addressing a huge throng estimated at more than 2 million people on the capital’s Mall and millions of others watching on television, Obama recognized the multiple crises now afflicting…

It would have been too risky for the first black president to completely flip the script on inaugural protocol the first time out. Wouldn’t it have been nice to see Barack Obama stride to the podium in a stately East African tunic, complete with headgear and wooden staff?  But my Zamunda-styled fantasy inauguration, complete with…

I can’t help it; I gotta sing. “Aaaah-maayzin’ ger-ace! How su-weeeet thuh sound … ” What an amazing day to be black. What an amazing day to be an American. This is the day we never thought we would live to see, the one our grandparents prayed for, the one that inspired my wife Gayle…

“I brushed the boots of Washington.” —-Langston Hughes in “Negro” On the day it became Mr. Obama’s Washington, steam still fogged the windows at Henry’s, a soul food staple not far from the White House. Go-go music still blasted from loud speakers at the corner of 7th and U. The U Street club Republic Gardens…

During the presidential campaign, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera provided a little comic relief when he imagined that political superstars Barack Obama, Deval Patrick and others must have attended some sort of “black genius camp” where they learned the secrets of winning political power. Now it turns out that Geraldo was onto something. The Breakthrough, PBS…

In 1939, an American contralto singer named Marian Anderson stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered a rousing hymn to her country—even though she was barred, as a black woman, from performing at the nearby Constitution Hall. On Inauguration Day 2009, Aretha Franklin called the same song—”My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”—back from…

On what would have been his 80th birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. must be smiling from whatever heavenly vista he was rewarded for giving his life for black justice and American freedom. Forty years after King was gunned down in Memphis, Barack Obama rode the promise of change into the White House. It’s as if…

On Election Night 2008, a jangling, inter-ethnic mob in Washington, D.C. toasted Barack Obama’s presidential victory, stopping traffic at 14th and U streets—the same crossroads where, 40 years earlier, in April, Bobby Kennedy had signed autographs at a campaign rally, and where Stokely Carmichael and other members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had crouched,…

I don’t work on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. A few years ago, I just stopped doing it and decided to take a personal day instead. The federal holiday occasionally falls near my birthday or sometimes, like this year, on my birthday. It took years for me to arrive at my decision. As a journalist,…

WATCH THE ‘TOUR OF ECHOES‘ VIDEO HERE. Harry S. Truman met his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, at the exit of the U.S. Capitol minutes before the president-elect strolled to the stage to take the oath of office. Truman whispered, “There are thousands of folks out here, millions listening on the radio, and yet you’ll never feel…