MS NOW Exclusive | Hope Comes Home: Inside the Obama Presidential Center - Part 1
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What is the Obama Presidential Center and why did it open on Juneteenth?
Ever since I was young, I've watched people working hard, chasing opportunity, making sacrifices, doing everything they can to build a better life. And now we're shining a light on what matters most. Our economy, our national identity, our democracy, our future. The stakes have never been higher. It's all on the line. On the Line with Alicia Menendez. Weekdays at 12 p.m. Eastern on MSNOW.
Hello, Chicago. It's good to be home.
The president like no other is back where it all began, opening a new chapter on the South Side of Chicago. His legacy and his dream on display. Generosity towards each other. Everybody counts and everybody matters. her legacy and dream as well.
It was important for me that kids like me could be right in their neighborhood and see world-class art.
Tonight, we hear from the former president and first lady and give you a tour of the museum and the sparkling new campus. Welcome to Hope Comes Home, inside the Obama Presidential Center. Good evening. I'm Michelle Norris. Welcome to Hope Comes Home inside the Obama Presidential Center. The campus is now open to the public. It opened on Juneteenth. And almost everything about this center is meant to be different from any other presidential library or monument that's come before it. The Obamas wanted this place to be an inspiration, a resource, an incubator for leadership. They don't just want you to look back at what he did during his eight years in office. They want you to feel some sense of responsibility for what needs to happen next.
Maybe a way to think about the Presidential Center and what at least we tried to create is some touchstones, some markers, some tools for people to just be reminded of, oh yeah, this is what our democracy is. This is who we are. We don't have to distrust each other. We don't have to hate each other. We don't have to scapegoat each other. We could actually try to find common ground and work together to do some good. We're going to hear so much more from President Obama tonight, as well as former First Lady Michelle Obama. We had a chance to have a good long chat with both of them, and they talked about their vision for this place and much more. And if you're not here in Chicago, well, you might as well be, because we have gotten an early look inside this sprawling center.
And tonight, we're going to give you an inside look at the building, the campus, and the story Barack and Michelle Obama want to tell the nation and the world. If you had asked the young Barack Obama what he wanted to be when he grew up, he might have told you that his dream was to be an architect. That boyhood ambition of his helps to explain why the story of the Obama Presidential Center starts not with a traditional library or a monument or even a dusty box of papers from the archives, but with the walls themselves. What you see here is the main building at the Obama Presidential Center, more than 200 feet tall, built from granite the president handpicked himself. The architects based their design of the building on the image of four hands joined together.
They wanted the building to look as if these hands are holding a lantern or a light of some kind, like a giant beacon here on Chicago's South Side. And there, as you can see in the top corner curving around the edge of the building, is the text of the speech President Obama delivered on the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
You are America, unconstrained by habit and convention.
unencumbered by what is, because you're ready to seize what ought to be. For modern-day presidents, building a library is yet another civic duty once they leave office. Every president since Herbert Hoover has built a presidential library. They are monuments to the men who serve their country and a kind of glorified warehouse to store all the papers and documents from their time in office. As Obama advisor Marty Nesbitt discovered, they can end up being rather lonely places. Every presidential center I went to, the archives were empty.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the Obama Presidential Center and why did it open on Juneteenth?
0:00–5:52
2
How does the Center’s architecture symbolize its mission and design inspiration?
5:52–15:05
3
How did the Obamas decide to make this a community-centered campus instead of a traditional library?
15:05–27:47
4
What public facilities and programs are included to serve Chicago’s South Side?
27:47–43:46
5
Which historical artifacts and founding contradictions are emphasized in the museum exhibits?
43:46–44:52
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Rachel Maddow Show
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