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We Had a Ball!
Larry King went live from the event and got a chance to get the back of a lot of random heads. The Daily Beast is right, though, Obama didn’t show up. But many other did — Spike Lee, Oprah Winfrey, Natalie Portman, Diane von Furstenburg and, oh yes, Damon Weaver — and it’s hard to…
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Pragmatism and the Presidency
Henry Louis Gates Jr. and John Stauffer in today’s NYT: “UNTIL a martyred John F. Kennedy replaced him, Abraham Lincoln was one of the two white men whose image most frequently graced even the most modest black home, second in popularity only to Jesus. Perhaps none of his heirs in the Oval Office has been…
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Has King's Dream Come to Fruition?
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation conducted a survey last week about race relations. They phoned 798 whites and 332 blacks and asked if King’s “I Have a Dream” vision has been fulfilled. Meaning: do we, as multi-varied Americans, believe race is no longer an issue in Obama’s America on the eve of the Grand Inauguration? And…
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Still 'On Fire'
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,…
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Why I Don’t Work on King Day
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,…
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'Welcome to Washington'
The welcome was offered by President-elect Barack Obama on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Sunday afternoon. After laying a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden joined the celebration on the National Mall. It’s chilly, but it feels good in Washington, D.C. with 48 hours until…
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Sounds of Blackness
While some listen for echoes of Lincoln in Obama’s inaugural speech, others will hear Malcolm and Martin. Read Michael Eric Dyson’s full article here.
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The First Supper
Back when President-elect Barack Obama was still slugging it out for the Democratic nomination, I took to the kitchen to soothe my frazzled nerves. (Cooking relaxes me.) What I came up with was a Hawaiian and African inspired savory supper that I called Barack pie. On the eve of the most important inauguration of our…
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The Inaugural Poet
The selection of Yale professor and poet Elizabeth Alexander to write and deliver a poem at the inauguration of Barack Obama marks not only the return of poetry to a place of prominence in presidential history (she is only the fourth to read at a presidential swearing-in), but represents a true mind-meld between the president-elect…
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Tour of Echoes
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…