The year was 1967. Barack Obama was a child in kindergarten, where he scribbled that he dreamed of one day becoming President of the United States of America. Perhaps the larger historical context of this moment is lost on some of us. Let us turn back the clock and remember the events of 1967, and understand the significance of this small boy’s big dream.
January 3, 1967: Edward Brooke, R-MA, is sworn in as the first black Senator elected since Reconstruction.
January 10, 1967: Segregationist Lester Maddox is sworn in as Governor of Georgia. An old Southern Dixiecrat, Maddox would two years later deny Martin Luther King Jr. the honor of lying In State in the Georgia capitol rotunda after King’s assassination.
June 12, 1967: the Supreme Court hands down Loving v. Virginia, striking down the remaining anti-miscegenation laws and thus overturning Pace v. Alabama, which had stood since 1883 as the legal precedent against interracial marriage.
July 12 to 17, 1967: riots break out across Newark, NJ, after the majority-white police department beats a black cab driver whom they have arrested for a minor infraction. The riots are considered to be a long-brewing response to the lack of respect and representation for the city’s majority of black citizens by the largely-white local government.
The summer of 1967 is characterized by race riots across the country, as disenfranchised black citizens take to the streets in opposition to the many socio-economic policies that prevent them from gaining a foothold in America. In response, President Lyndon Johnson forms the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate the cause of the riots. Their report concludes, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—-separate and unequal." The report states that one main cause of urban violence is white racism, and calls for new jobs and housing in black neighborhoods to fight the decay of the urban black ghetto.
August 2, 1967: In The Heat of the Night premieres in New York City. The film features Sidney Poitier as a Philadelphia detective who is mistakenly arrested in Mississippi for the murder of a white man simply because he is black. He ends up winning the trust of the local law enforcement and solving the crime. The film goes on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Rod Steiger wins the statue for Best Actor. Perhaps his portrayal of the Southern cop who learns to respect a Northern black detective is viewed to be the more astonishing role.
October 2, 1967: Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first black Supreme Court Justice of the United States. Previously he had served as Chief Council for the NAACP, in which capacity he successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education, the decision which struck down "separate but equal."
November 7, 1967: Carl B. Stokes, a Democrat, is elected Mayor of Cleveland, OH – the first black mayor of a major American city, defeating Seth Taft, grandson of the former President. Raised in the first federally-funded housing project for the poor, Stokes joined the Army and eventually earned his Bachelor’s and Law degrees. Three years later he would be elected the first black president of the National League of Cities.
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Far away from this backdrop of struggle and progress, a young black boy living in Indonesia dreamed of one day becoming the President of the United States of America. A boy who was the product of an interracial marriage between a Kenyan and a Kansan, a couple whose marriage was considered to be a crime in parts of this very country on the day he was born. A boy who could have easily been killed in parts of this country with no judicial recourse, no law enforcement officer willing to even investigate the crime. A boy who, on the day of his birth in 1961, was not even guaranteed the most basic of civil rights on the basis of the color of his skin.
The fact that in 1967 Obama could even conceive of such a dream makes me wonder if he was unaware of these events, unaware that for many Americans, the color of his skin would make such a dream laughable. We talk and occasionally josh about his book title, The Audacity of Hope. I look at the historical context against which Obama first expressed a mere childhood fantasy of one day becoming President, and I think, that’s some audacity. And I wonder--would he have been able to even form this dream at such a young age if he knew the vast legacy of racism and discrimination in this country?
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The story reminds me, in a way, of a line in one of the last scenes in the 2005 film Hustle & Flow, in which the main character says,
"You know that little girl Keisha, right? One day she gonna dream big, the way kids do, you know. And she gonna come to me and ask me when she grow up, can she become president? But I tell you something. I'm gonna look her right in the eye... ...and I'm gonna lie. Because sometimes that's what you gotta do."
I was struck by the scene the first time I saw the film. The idea that a poor black girl of unknown parentage from the worst parts of Memphis could overcome the insurmountable obstacles between her and the White House seems implausable, even today in 2007.
But who am I to judge? In 1967, how many people would have taken Barack Obama’s big dream seriously? Not only because he was a child, but because he was a black citizen in a decade in which 27 Senators and 126 Congressmen—including members of both political parties, including people who are today his colleagues in that legislative body—voted against giving him equal rights under the law.
Importantly, I don’t think this sort of dismissal is unique to Obama, nor do I think that race was the only limiting factor back in the 1960s. I wonder, in 1967, how many people would have believed the same dream if it was voiced by a then-20-year-old Hillary Clinton, herself becoming radicalized during the Civil Rights Movement and working on the Eugene McCarthy presidential campaign?
Honestly, in 1967, I doubt too many people would have taken the desires of either a black man or a woman to be president seriously. In fact, there are people today who don’t think a woman or a black man stands a chance.
Thus, I do not see Obama’s fanciful childhood wish as a reason to deride his optimism or sully his ambition. Rather, I am thankful that he expressed it at a time when the potential for a black man to hold an elected office on a city- or state-wide level was finally coming to fruition.
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So I’m glad that in 1967, a young Barack Obama had the sheer temerity to dream that he might one day become president. The alternative—in which he cannot voice such a dream because it is simply too preposterous, too impossible—is far, far worse.
I’m equally glad that today, in 2007, we have a choice of candidates amongst a crowded field that includes a black man, a woman, a Latino, the child of a mill worker, a Peace Corps volunteer, and multiple children of immigrant laborers. I’m glad that all of these people are running for president—I’m glad that all of them can! I’m glad that all of them are Democrats, too, because it can remind all of us that we’re supposed to be a party of inclusion. And finally, we are in a race where one’s sex or race or class status or family history does not disqualify him or her from consideration as a serious candidate.
And I wonder—one day, will the moment at which America’s first black president first expressed his long-shot dream of one day holding that elected office one day make it into the history books under things that happened in 1967?