The Barack Obama Presidential Center is opening on Friday to the public, while some people who worked closely with President Barack Obama have already been able to tour of the library and museum.
The center, located in the Jackson Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, is a gray building with part of a speech wrapping around two sides of the building in the middle of a green area with playgrounds and gardens. The new center is positioned close to Lake Michigan and the University of Chicago, where Michelle Obama once worked.
Mike Jordan, a retired State Farm agent and Bloomington native, said he started working on various Democratic political campaigns with Obama in 1997. He said the two talked for hours when Jordan visited Springfield to support Debbie Halvorson's campaign for the Illinois Senate.
Jordan said he continued to work on some of the same political campaigns as Obama, becoming a board member for Obama’s campaign for U.S. Senate in 2004.
“[Obama has] been a good friend, and he's a friend first. That's what I tell people. I was never on the payroll; I always volunteered. He's as good a friend as you'd ever have,” Jordan said.
Terri Lantz, Jordan’s sister, met Obama when he started campaigning for U.S. Senate in McLean County, and by that point Jordan was already good friends with Obama. Lantz said at the time, Michelle and Barack Obama had been on the campaign trail throughout Illinois.
“It was the first time I met Mrs. [Michelle] Obama, and she was so gracious. We stepped to the side and our young daughters ran off to a playground together, and she was so thrilled to have some normalcy during this crazy time of their life,” Lantz said.
Jordan said he was also on the board of Obama for America, which supported Obama's presidential run. Obama would be the 44th president from 2009-2017. He would later be picked to be a member of the Obama Foundation board, which planned and build the Barack Obama Presidential Center.
The Obama Foundation oversaw the construction of the Obama Center and worked closely with Obama to create his vision for the center.
Form and function
Jordan said they decided on Jackson Park as a location for the center because Michelle and Barack Obama had a lot of familial and political history in the area.
“Michelle's a daughter of the South Side: parents were there, school was there, brother Craig was there — everything had happened there. Barack got his start on the far South Side working with churches in the developing community projects,” Jordan said.
Lantz said the campus is a community center just as much as it is a presidential library.
“The museum building obviously is just so awe-striking when you see it, but then as I look toward the south... to see everything that's available for the public was just incredible to see,” Lantz said.
Jordan said the center will be the headquarters of the Obama Foundation that runs My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, which aims to improve the lives of boys and young men of color, and Girls Opportunity Alliance, which empowers girls with education and community support.
He added Obama wanted the space to be actively helping communities.
“...not some staid place that collects dust," Jordan said. "He's going to have this open as much as possible, the parks open — again, free for anyone that wants to go through there."
Jordan said they digitized all the collections in the complex's museum, “so that someone did not necessarily have to come to the South Side of Chicago to do research."
"If someone who was in South America wanted to do a study, they just go to the Obama website," he said.
Lantz said there were a lot of emotions when she toured the museum because it had sections on all of Obama’s campaigns.
“...to truly feel a part of something — because it was such a grassroots movement,” Lantz said.
Lantz said a lot of the spaces were named in honor of people who were important to Obama like John Lewis Plaza, Nelson Mandela Viewing Area and Eleanor Roosevelt Gardens.
“That's what really stuck out to me: how many other people that the Obamas wanted to recognize that were important people in their lives. You go through this entire campus, not only the museum, and something is named for somebody who was very significant to them,” Lantz said.
Criticism
There are some concerns that the Obama Presidential Center could raise property values in the area.
Jordan said the center plans to hire local workers to help keep as much of its economic benefit in the neighborhood and to help ensure current residents won't be priced out of the area.
“I know they're working closely to make sure that affordable housing, which was a significant part of [Obama's] career, stays on track in that area as well,” Jordan said.
The center has also drawn criticism for the architecture of the building. It was nicknamed the "Obamalisk" by the New York Times.
Lantz said she saw how the entire campus was about giving back to the community and honoring important people in history.
“[The center] is a beacon, you just feel a draw as you come into this area, and then when you do get out and look across this entire campus of, and then knowing it was built for the people is what's amazing to me,” Lantz said.
Jordan said Chicago is know for its architecture and those architects have received the center well. He said it's designed to symbolize four hands, the four sides, meeting in aspiration of hope and hopes rising.
Inscribed on two sides is text from Obama's speech at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of civil rights demonstrations on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
Obama's letters
The Obama Presidential Center has a section focused on the Office of Presidential Correspondence, which in the early days of the Obama administration was headed up by Bloomington native Mike Kelleher.
Kelleher also worked for Obama during his term in the U.S. Senate. He called recalled early in Obama's career, a lot of people said he could be president some day.
“It's not unusual for people to say that about a young elected official or person who's impressive. I learned much later that he's an extraordinarily determined and disciplined, effective public servant, and he has a great intellectual depth,” Kelleher said.
When Obama became president, Kelleher got a job in the administration selecting letters for Obama to read from among the hundreds of letters that were mailed to the White House every week.
“I did some reading and looked at some research about this process. Presidents had been doing this... [with others] reading their mail, back as far back as I could learn, during the Franklin Roosevelt administration,” Kelleher said.
They decided to give 10 letters a day to Obama, and he would occasionally write a letter back with his own handwriting.
Kelleher said letters were always important for Obama to understand the public, but letters became essential when Obama was president.
“The president was desperate to get that, because he experienced this bubble right away. He couldn't go to the bookstore, and be by himself and get a cup of coffee,” Kelleher said.
Kelleher said he would pick letters that were representative of what many constituents were feeling. They would also pick letters about current events, letters with personal stories and some that criticized the president.
Kelleher said the president did bring up letters sometimes during White House meetings.
“That made me really nervous," Kelleher said, "to think that I was — so, people might think that I was putting my finger on the scale to try to impose a message or an outcome, but I really wanted to be honest with the president about what he was getting.
Kelleher said it depends on the president whether they actually read or personally respond to letters, but the Office of Presidential Correspondence has to respond.
Kelleher said Obama would also talk about some of the letters he received in his speeches.
“A woman named Natoma, who was having a health challenge, she wrote to the president. And it became sort of a template letter that the president would mention during his speeches,” Kelleher said.
Kelleher said the letters gave Obama a personal reason to keep pushing for Medicaid and Medicare expansion, which led to passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2009.
Kelleher said he would not be able to attend the opening ceremonies and has not toured the museum, but wants to in the future.
“It's exciting to know that the work of hundreds of people who worked in that office over the eight years of the Obama administration will be recognized,” Kelleher said.
