Quote · The Indicator from Planet Money
Obama's new Presidential Center and his tricky relationship with the South Side
Where this was said
The South Side as the Capital of Black America
At 9:45 · chapter starts 8:10
Natalie Moore lays down a foundational claim: Chicago's South Side is not just a large Black neighborhood — it is the capital of Black America, the estuary into which the rivers of the Great Migration flowed, and the place where Black History Month, Black Studies, and dozens of other cultural institutions were founded. Both Moore and Myra Kwadja reveal they lived on Greenwood Avenue, just two blocks from the Obama home, giving them a physically intimate rather than abstract relationship with the presidency. Moore recalls being unable to get down her own block due to Secret Service closures when she had a flat tire; Kwadja remembers bumping into Obama at Valois, his favorite diner. This personal, neighborhood-level ownership — 'Obama!' shouted by taxi drivers worldwide whenever you said you were from Chicago — was a distinctive feature of the South Side's relationship with the presidency that outsiders rarely understood. Moore also articulates the spectrum of Black opinion on Obama: from broad excitement in 2008 to more complex, policy-rooted critiques by 2016, including arguments that 'the empire knows no color.'
Natalie Moore and Myra Kwadja both lived two blocks from the Obamas on Greenwood Avenue. The South Side's relationship with Barack Obama was personal, physical, and possessive — not the abstract hero-worship of the rest of the country.
For the high school students Myra Kwadja worked with, Obama was a celebrity — not a beacon of possibility. Their relationship with government was filtered entirely through daily police presence, making voting feel like just another form of being surveilled.
