Michele Norris
speaker
715 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 20 Jun
Michele Norris’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
So instead of launching immediately into the timeline of Barack Obama's life, you see the historic preamble to his story.
Behind glass is a ballot from 1876, when the first black man was elected to the Illinois General Assembly.
An early draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Buttons from the Civil Rights Movement.
Picket signs from labor strikes.
The presidential pen used to sign the Voting Rights Act.
Artifacts belonging to the people who fought these fights before Barack Obama ever entered politics.
The suffragists and the civil rights workers and the labor organizers who put everything on the line to shove our country forward and create the possibility for a black man to be elected president of the United States.
The first words you see on the way into the exhibit space remind visitors that America has always been a work in progress.
This museum surrounds visitors with that idea, the push and pull of progress and the evidence that America has always been arguing with itself about who belongs and who gets to decide who counts and who is forced to the margins.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real.
They are serious and they are many.
The very existence of this center, celebrating America's first black president, becomes part of that argument, an assertion that leadership rooted in hope and pluralism can exist in America.
Are you fired up?
The center opens its doors at a time of deep anxiety and division, a moment when Americans are worried about the values they hold dear and the health of American democracy, worried for good reason.
This place is designed to be a reminder from the moment you step in the door that an imperfect, contradictory, and sometimes confounding system can birth a multiracial democracy and make it stronger over time.
What will resonate for people of all backgrounds is they will see themselves in these floors.
America will see itself.
Coming into the space can be heavy.
It's powerful.
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