Where history meets hope

Dr. Pamela Washington stepped onto the grounds of the Barack Obama Presidential Center on opening weekend and felt the presence of the people who came before her.

Her parents, who have since passed away, were early supporters of then-Sen. Barack Obama — canvassing St. Louis neighborhoods and staffing phone banks to help elect the nation’s first Black president. Her uncles were Freedom Riders of the 1960s. They were part of a generation that marched, organized and prayed for a future they could only imagine.

“I know my mom and dad would be ecstatic to be here,” she said. “But the blessing is that I’m able to be here for all the people who cannot, regardless of if they’re living or not living.”

Washington, president of the St. Louis chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc., made the trip to Chicago with her longtime best friend and fellow St. Louis native Erica Walker. As they moved through the exhibits together, Washington found herself thinking about the sacrifices that shaped her family and the history that made the moment possible.

The Obama Presidential Center opened June 19, Juneteenth, on a 19-acre campus on Chicago’s South Side near where Obama began his career as a community organizer. The center includes a museum, public spaces, community programming and exhibits tracing the nation’s ongoing struggle to expand democracy and opportunity.

“It’s breathtaking,” Washington said. “It’s beautiful. It’s exuberant. It gave me hope.”

Walker felt the energy, too.

“A lot of joy, smiles, peace, a lot of happiness,” she said. “People were full again.”

The experience began before they reached the upper floors. Exhibits on women’s suffrage and voting rights stopped both women in their tracks.

From there, the center takes visitors on a deeper journey. A three-story audio-visual wall weaves together American history and the voices of figures such as James Baldwin and Obama. The opening exhibit, “We the People: Toward a More Perfect Union,” traces the country’s journey through slavery, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement.

For Washington, hearing even a fragment of Baldwin’s voice rising from that wall was enough to stop her completely.

“It starts with ‘We the People’ and goes through the Civil Rights period, Jim Crow,” she said. “That part was really emotional for me.”

Outside, a plaque honoring voting-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer stopped her again. Hamer was beaten repeatedly for trying to vote and refused to be silenced.

Washington left with something sharpened inside her: a renewed commitment to voter engagement and grassroots action.

“Each of us have some level of influence and power,” she said. “We need to use it for the good.”

For Valeriano Blackburn, an East St. Louis native now living in Chicago, the center represents more than a presidency. A father of three and youth advocate, he sees it as a reminder of the generations whose sacrifices made Obama’s rise possible.

“You’re standing on the shoulders of giants when you walk through that facility,” he said. “It’s not just Obama. It’s everyone who came before him as well.”

The center also has a St. Louis connection. Daria Smith, a St. Louis native and former St. Louis American Foundation scholarship recipient, spent nearly five years helping develop exhibitions before the center opened.

“It finally kind of hit me,” Smith said. “That I’ve been a part of something that’s really going to make an impact in the community.”

Smith said growing up with access to cultural institutions such as the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Missouri History Museum and the Saint Louis Zoo shaped her understanding of what museums and public spaces could be. She said that experience influenced her work helping create a center designed to be accessible and welcoming beyond its museum walls.

Before she left, Washington walked the grounds one last time. She thought about her father, who loved long walks, and her mother, who believed in showing up. The center, she said, felt like proof that their showing up for the Obama campaign nearly 20 years ago mattered.

“You have to know where you come from,” she said, “to have an appreciation for where you are and where you’re going. The Center helps bridge that gap.”

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