CHICAGO’S PRESIDENT
City had front- row seat as state senator from South Side rose to become nation’s first African- American commander in chief
PLUS: Despite achievements, Obama couldn’t stem Chicago violence
Obama ‘ indelibly in the fabric of Chicago’ after city witnesses his rise from state senator to president
WASHINGTON — Oh, Chicago, we will miss having the president be one of our own.
After eight years, we’ve gotten used to it.
President Barack Obama. First lady Michelle Obama. South Siders, both. They made us proud to be Chicagoans.
We set aside our sides — North, South, West, Southwest, Southeast — and with one voice in Grant Park on election night in 2008 we celebrated. A Chicagoan had won the presidency.
Obama’s most tangible Chicago legacy will be the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, which will last beyond our lifetimes.
But consider, too, the intangibles of his legacy, things that Chicagoans share and will pass on about Obama to our next generation because we were there from the start.
No matter our political ideology, race, gender, religion or income, we have a story to tell. We were there when a state senator from Hyde Park with a funny name catapulted from Springfield to the White House — with a brief stop in the U. S. Senate — all in the span of about four years.
A Chicagoan broke a racial barrier and became the nation’s first African- American president. And then he won a second term, running both national campaigns from headquarters in downtown Chicago.
We can’t sugarcoat this: Chicago has been grappling with persistent problems with violence these years while Obama has been in the White House. The city’s longstanding, race- related problems and festering issues with the police department did not vanish just because Obama was the president. There were 780 murders in Chicago in 2016.
That doesn’t diminish the fact, though, that Obama is “in-