by Barack Obama
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 radiate
d 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.
“Shut up,” the older boy replied.
“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!
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 all for Jesus. Lord, we come from different walks of life. Some considered high, and some low…but al
l on 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.”