Barack Obama Dreams from My Father

account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car. These miseducated brothers,

like that sociologist at the University of Chicago, talking about ‘the declining significance of race.’ Now, what

country is he living in?”

But wasn’t there a reality to the class divisions, I wondered? I mentioned the conversation I’d had with

his assistant, the tendency of those with means to move out of the line of fire. He took off his glasses and

rubbed what I now saw to be a pair of tired eyes.

“I’ve given Tracy my opinion about moving out of the city,” he said quietly. “That boy of hers is gonna

get out there and won’t have a clue about where, or who, he is.”

“It’s tough to take chances with your child’s safety.”

“Life’s not safe for a black man in this country, Barack. Never has been. Probably never will be.”

A secretary buzzed, reminding Reverend Wright of his next appointment. We shook hands, and he

agreed to have Tracy prepare a list of members for me to meet. Afterward, in the parking lot, I sat in my car

and thumbed through a silver brochure that I’d picked up in the reception area. It contained a set of guiding

principles-a “Black Value System”-that the congregation had adopted in 1979. At the top of the list was a

commitment to God, “who will give us the strength to give up prayerful passivism and become Black

Christian activists, soldiers for Black freedom and the dignity of all humankind.” Then a commitment to the

black community and black family, education, the work ethic, discipline, and self-respect.

A sensible, heartfelt list-not so different, I suspected, from the values old Reverend Philips might have

learned in his whitewashed country church two generations before. There was one particular passage in

Trinity’s brochure that stood out, though, a commandment more self-conscious in its tone, requiring greater

elaboration. “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness,” the heading read. “While it is permissible to

chase ‘middleincomeness’ with all our might,” the text stated, those blessed with the talent or good fortune

to achieve success in the American mainstream must avoid the “psychological entrapment of Black

‘middleclassness’ that hypnotizes the successful brother or sister into believing they are better than the rest

and teaches them to think in terms of ‘we’ and ‘they’ instead of ‘US’!”
My thoughts would often return to that declaration in the weeks that followed as I met with various

members of Trinity. I decided that Reverend Wright was at least partly justified in dismissing the church’s

critics, for the bulk of its membership was solidly working class, the same teachers and secretaries and

government workers one found in other big black churches throughout the city. Residents from the nearby

housing project had been actively recruited, and programs designed to meet the needs of the poor-legal aid,

tutorials, drug programs-took up a substantial amount of the church’s resources.

Still, there was no denying that the church had a disproportionate number of black professionals in its

ranks: engineers, doctors, accountants, and corporate managers. Some of them had been raised in Trinity;

others had transferred in from other denominations. Many confessed to a long absence from any religious

practice-a conscious choice for some, part of a political or intellectual awakening, but more often because

church had seemed irrelevant to them as they’d pursued their careers in largely white institutions.

At some point, though, they all told me of having reached a spiritual dead end; a feeling, at once

inchoate and oppressive, that they’d been cut off from themselves. Intermittently, then more regularly, they

had returned to the church, finding in Trinity some of the same things every religion hopes to offer its

converts: a spiritual harbor and the chance to see one’s gifts appreciated and acknowledged in a way that a

paycheck never can; an assurance, as bones stiffened and hair began to gray, that they belonged to

something that would outlast their own lives-and that, when their time finally came, a community would be

there to remember.

But not all of what these people sought was strictly religious, I thought; it wasn’t just Jesus they were

coming home to. It occurred to me that Trinity, with its African themes, its emphasis on black history,

continued the role that Reverend Philips had described earlier as a redistributor of values and circulator of

ideas. Only now the redistribution didn’t run in just a single direction from the schoolteacher or the physician

who saw it as a Christian duty to help the sharecropper or the young man fresh from the South adapt to big-

city life. The flow of culture now ran in reverse as well; the former gang-banger, the teenage mother, had

their own forms of validation-claims of greater deprivation, and hence authenticity, their presence in the

church providing the lawyer or doctor with an education from the streets. By widening its doors to allow all

who would enter, a church like Trinity assured its members that their fates remained inseparably bound, that

an intelligible “us” still remained.

It was a powerful program, this cultural community, one more pliant than simple nationalism, more

sustaining than my own brand of organizing. Still, I couldn’t help wondering whether it would be enough to

keep more people from leaving the city or young men out of jail. Would the Christian fellowship between a

black school administrator, say, and a black school parent change the way the schools were run? Would the

interest in maintaining such unity allow Reverend Wright to take a forceful stand on the latest proposals to

reform public housing? And if men like Reverend Wright failed to take a stand, if churches like Trinity

refused to engage with real power and risk genuine conflict, then what chance would there be of holding the

larger community intact?

Sometimes I would put such questions to the people I met with. They would respond with the same

bemused look Reverend Philips and Reverend Wright had given me. For them, the principles in Trinity’s

brochure were articles of faith no less than belief in the Resurrection. You have some good ideas, they

would tell me. Maybe if you joined the church you could help us start a community program. Why don’t you

come by on Sunday?

And I would shrug and play the question off, unable to confess that I could no longer distinguish

between faith and mere folly, between faith and simple endurance; that while I believed in the sincerity I

heard in their voices, I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient

conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won.
The day before Thanksgiving, Harold Washington died.

It occurred without warning. Only a few months earlier, Harold had won reelection, handily beating

Vrdolyak and Byrne, breaking the deadlock that had prevailed in the city for the previous four years. He had

run a cautious campaign this time out, professionally managed, without any of the fervor of 1983; a

campaign of consolidation, of balanced budgets and public works. He reached out to some of the old-time

Machine politicians, the Irish and the Poles, ready to make peace. The business community sent him their

checks, resigned to his presence. So secure was his power that rumblings of discontent had finally surfaced

within his own base, among black nationalists upset with his willingness to cut whites and Hispanics into the

action, among activists disappointed with his failure to tackle poverty head-on, and among people who

preferred the dream to the reality, impotence to compromise.

Harold didn’t pay such critics much attention. He saw no reason to take any big risks, no reason to

hurry. He said he’d be mayor for the next twenty years.

And then death: sudden, simple, final, almost ridiculous in its ordinariness, the heart of an overweight

man giving way.

It rained that weekend, cold and steady. In the neighborhood, the streets were silent. Indoors and

outside, people cried. The black radio stations replayed Harold’s speeches, hour after hour, trying to

summon the dead. At City Hall, the lines wound around several blocks as mourners visited the body, lying in

state. Everywhere black people appeared dazed, stricken, uncertain of direction, frightened of the future.

By the time of the funeral, Washington loyalists had worked through the initial shock. They began to

meet, regroup, trying to decide on a strategy for maintaining control, trying to select Harold’s rightful heir.

But it was too late for that. There was no political organization in place, no clearly defined principles to

follow. The entire of black politics had centered on one man who radiated like a sun. Now that he was gone,

no one could agree on what that presence had meant.

The loyalists squabbled. Factions emerged. Rumors flew. By Monday, the day the city council was to

select a new mayor to serve until the special election, the coalition that had first put Harold in office was all

but extinguished. I went down to City Hall that evening to watch this second death. People, mostly black,

had been gathering outside the city council’s chambers since late afternoon-old people, curiosity seekers,

men and women with banners and signs. They shouted at the black aldermen who had cut deals with the

white bloc. They waved dollar bills at the soft-spoken black alderman-a holdover from Machine days-behind

whom the white aldermen had thrown their support. They called this man a sellout and an Uncle Tom. They

chanted and stomped and swore never to leave.

But power was patient and knew what it wanted; power could out-wait slogans and prayers and

candlelight vigils. Around midnight, just before the council got around to taking a vote, the door to the

chambers opened briefly and I saw two of the aldermen off in a huddle. One, black, had been Harold’s man;

the other, white, Vrdolyak’s. They were whispering now, smiling briefly, then looking out at the still-chanting

crowd and quickly suppressing their smiles, large, fleshy men in double-breasted suits with the same look of

hunger in their eyes-men who knew the score.

I left after that. I pushed through the crowds that overflowed into the street and began walking across

Daley Plaza toward my car. The wind whipped up cold and sharp as a blade, and I watched a handmade

sign tumble past me. HIS SPIRIT LIVES ON, the sign read in heavy block letters. And beneath the words

that picture I had seen so many times while waiting for a chair in Smitty’s Barbershop: the handsome,

grizzled face; the indulgent smile; the twinkling eyes; now blowing across the empty space, as easily as an

autumn leaf.
The months passed at a breathless pace, with constant reminders of all the things left undone. We

worked with a citywide coalition in support of school reform. We held a series of joint meetings with

Mexicans in the Southeast Side to craft a common environmental strategy for the region. I drove Johnnie

nuts trying to cram him with the things it had taken me three years to learn.

“So who did you meet with this week?” I would ask.

“Well, there’s this woman, Mrs. Banks, over at True Vine Holiness Church. Seems like she’s got

potential…hold on, yeah, here it is. Teacher, interested in education. I think she’ll definitely work with us.”

“What does her husband do?”

“You know, I forgot to ask her-”

“What does she think of the teachers’ union?”

“Damn, Barack, I only had half an hour….”

In February, I received my acceptance from Harvard. The letter came with a thick packet of

information. It reminded me of the packet I’d received from Punahou that summer fourteen years earlier. I

remembered how Gramps had stayed up the whole night reading from the catalog about music lessons and

advanced placement courses, glee clubs and baccalaureates; how he had waved that catalog and told me it

would be my meal ticket, that the contacts I made at a school like Punahou would last me a lifetime, that I

would move in charmed circles and have all the opportunities that he’d never had. I remembered how, at

the end of the evening, he had smiled and tousled my hair, his breath smelling of whiskey, his eyes shining

as if he were about to cry. And I had smiled back at him, pretending to understand but actually wishing I

was still in Indonesia running barefoot along a paddy field, with my feet sinking into the cool, wet mud, part

of a chain of other brown boys chasing after a tattered kite.

I felt something like that now.

I had scheduled a luncheon that week at our office for the twenty or so ministers whose churches had

agreed to join the organization. Most of the ministers we’d invited showed up, as did most of our key

leadership. Together we discussed strategies for the coming year, the lessons learned from Harold’s death.

We set dates for a training retreat, agreed on a schedule of dues, talked about the continued need to recruit

more churches. When we were finished, I announced that I would be leaving in May and that Johnnie would

be taking over as director.

No one was surprised. They all came up to me afterward and offered their congratulations. Reverend

Philips assured me I had made a wise choice. Angela and Mona said they always knew I’d amount to

something someday. Shirley asked me if I’d be willing to advise a nephew of hers who had fallen down a

manhole and wanted to sue.

Only Mary seemed upset. After most of the ministers had left, she helped Will, Johnnie, and me clean

up. When I asked her if she needed a ride, she started shaking her head.

“What is it with you men?” she said, looking at Will and myself. Her voice trembled slightly as she

pulled on her coat. “Why is it you’re always in a hurry? Why is it that what you have isn’t ever good

enough?”

I started to say something, then thought about Mary’s two daughters at home, the father that they

would never know. Instead, I walked her to the door and gave her a hug. When she was gone, I returned to

the meeting room, where Will was working on a plate of leftover chicken wings.

“Want some?” he asked in between bites.

I shook my head, taking a seat across the table from him. He watched me for a while, chewing silently,

sucking hot sauce off his fingers.

“Place kinda grows on you, don’t it?” he said finally.

I nodded. “Yeah, Will. It does.”

He took a sip from his soda and let out a small burp. “Three years ain’t that long to be gone,” he said.

“How do you know I’m gonna be back?”

“I don’t know how I know,” he said, pushing away his plate. “I just know, that’s all.” Without another

word he went to wash his hands, before mounting his bike and riding off down the street.

I woke up at six A.M. that Sunday. It was still dark outside. I shaved, brushed the lint from my only suit,

and arrived at the church by seven-thirty. Most of the pews were already filled. A white-gloved usher led me

past elderly matrons in wide plumaged hats, tall unsmiling men in suits and ties and mud-cloth kufis,

children in their Sunday best. A parent from Dr. Collier’s school waved at me; an official from the CHA with

whom I’d had several run-ins nodded curtly. I shunted through to the center of a row and stuffed myself

between a plump older woman who failed to scoot over and a young family of four, the father already

sweating in his coarse woolen jacket, the mother telling the two young boys beside her to stop kicking each

other.

“Where’s God?” I overheard the toddler ask his brother.

“Both of you settle down right now,” the mother said.

Trinity’s associate pastor, a middle-aged woman with graying hair and a no-nonsense demeanor, read

the bulletin and led sleepy voices through a few traditional hymns. Then the choir filed down the aisle

dressed in white robes and kente-cloth shawls, clapping and singing as they fanned out behind the altar, an

organ following the quickening drums:

I’m so glad, Jesus lifted me!

I’m so glad, Jesus lifted me!

Singing Glory, Ha-le-lu-yah!

Jesus lifted me!
As the congregation joined in, the deacons, then Reverend Wright, appeared beneath the large cross

that hung from the rafters. The reverend remained silent while devotions were read, scanning the faces in

front of him, watching the collection basket pass from hand to hand. When the collection was over, he

stepped up to the pulpit and read the names of those who had passed away that week, those who were

ailing, each name causing a flutter somewhere in the crowd, the murmur of recognition.

“Let us join hands,” the reverend said, “as we kneel and pray at the foot of an old rugged cross-”

“Yes…”

“Lord, we come first to thank you for what you’ve already done for us…. We come to thank you most of

equal ground at the foot of this cross. Lord, thank you! For Jesus, Lord…our burden bearer and heavy load

sharer, we thank you….”

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a

passage from the Book of Samuel-the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and

shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had

preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being

confronted by a painting titled Hope.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to

be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and

bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down

to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of

war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-

au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy

in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church

bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White

House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic,

the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow,

the pain of those far from the mountain-top, worrying about paying the light bill. But also the pain of those

closer to the metaphorical summit: the middle-class woman who seems to have all her worldly needs taken

care of but whose husband is treating her like “the maid, the household service, the jitney service, and the

escort service all rolled into one”; the child whose wealthy parents worry more about “the texture of hair on

the outside of the head than the quality of education inside the head.”

“Isn’t that…the world that each of us stands on?”

“Yessuh!”

“Like Hannah, we have known bitter times! Daily, we face rejection and despair!”

“Say it!”

“And yet consider once again the painting before us. Hope! Like Hannah, that harpist is looking

upwards, a few faint notes floating upwards towards the heavens. She dares to hope…. She has the

audacity…to make music…and praise God…on the one string…she has left!”

People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the

reverend’s voice up into the rafters. As I watched and listened from my seat, I began to hear all the notes

from the past three years swirl about me. The courage and fear of Ruby and Will. The race pride and anger

of men like Rafiq. The desire to let go, the desire to escape, the desire to give oneself up to a God that

could somehow put a floor on despair.

And in that single note-hope!-I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of

churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David

and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those

stories-of survival, and freedom, and hope-became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our

blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying

the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once

unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us

a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shamed about, memories more accessible than

those of ancient Egypt, memories that all people might study and cherish-and with which we could start to

rebuild. And if a part of me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our

condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its

promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete,

the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.

“The audacity of hope! I still remember my grandmother, singing in the house, ‘There’s a bright side

somewhere…don’t rest till you find it….’”

“That’s right!”

“The audacity of hope! Times when we couldn’t pay the bills. Times when it looked like I wasn’t ever

going to amount to anything…at the age of fifteen, busted for grand larceny auto theft…and yet and still my

momma and daddy would break into a song…

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Je-sus,

Thank you, Lo-ord.

You brought me fro-om

A mighty long way, mighty long way.

myself. But see, I was only looking at the horizontal dimension of their lives!”

“Tell it now!”

“I didn’t understand that they were talking about the vertical dimension! About their relationship to God!

I didn’t understand that they were thanking Him in advance for all that they dared to hope for in me! Oh, I

thank you, Jesus, for not letting go of me when I let go of you! Oh yes, Jesus, I thank you….”

As the choir lifted back up into song, as the congregation began to applaud those who were walking to

the altar to accept Reverend Wright’s call, I felt a light touch on the top of my hand. I looked down to see the