After Quote by Charlie Pierce

Irving Wallace wrote a bestselling novel, The Man, in the 1960s about a black man becoming president of the United States. We thought that…

— Wayne Dyer

When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially…

— Marian Wright Edelman

Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better…

— Cornel West

“Obama was born into a country where laws barring his very conception—let alone his ascendancy to the presidency—had long stood in force. A black…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

President Obama is a man who had certain advantages because of the civil rights movement. He had the opportunity to go to some of…

— Danny Glover

Throughout every presidency since the heist of our country from indigenous peoples, the black American experience has been exceptional in its discomfort. And no…

— Patrisse Cullors

Black people have been qualified to be president for hundreds of years. George Washington Carver could have been president. I could go on with…

— Chris Rock

Something about the fact that an African American had, given the long sad history of our country, now become President - that was exhilarating.

— Bill Ayers

“By the middle to the end of the 1970s, Black Power as we envisioned was a dream deferred. And I was no longer in…

— Junius Williams

“It is, then, not simply a question of black power or white power, but of how meaningfully to reenfranchise human power. This, as I…

— Wendell Berry

I remember growing up, people would say, 'You could be president!' Well, for a black kid looking at that, it wasn't until Obama became…

— Jimmie Allen

“Whatever Obama’s other triumphs, arguably his greatest has been an expansion of the black imagination to encompass this: the idea that a man can…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates