USA: Inauguration of first black president - full text
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Senator Barack Obama of the Democratic Party was sworn in as the 44th and first African-American president of the USA on Jan. 20, 2009. His victory was hailed as an historic moment in the ending of racial inequality in the USA, but Obama faced what some analysts claimed was the greatest downward adjustment of the US economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In his inauguration speech Obama said: "Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met ... The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."
Immediate Context
Obama was elected to the presidency in November 2008, securing 365 of 540 electoral college votes, and 53 per cent of the popular vote. His main opponent, Senator John McCain of the Republican Party, won 46 per cent of the vote. Obama won nine states that Democratic candidate John Kerry had failed to win in the 2004 presidential election: North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, New Mexico, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida. To achieve this victory, Obama raised $340 million through mostly smaller online contributions to his campaign, nearly doubling the amount raised by his Republican opponent.
Contributing to Obama's election success was the low approval rating of the incumbent Republican administration of President George W. Bush. Controversial and unpopular government policies had included the US deployment in Iraq. The Newsweek magazine of Dec. 30, 2008, claimed that US unilateralism under Bush had squandered the USA's international authority. Also criticised was the government's response to the destruction of African-American districts in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, by Hurricane Katrina, in 2005.
An additional factor was the burgeoning mortgage and credit crisis. Opponents claimed that under Bush the government's lax regulation of business had allowed the economy to fall into recession. The crisis started when the inflated housing market cooled and mortgage-backed securities rapidly lost value in the summer of 2008. As a result, funds and institutions that had invested in these securities faced massive losses.
Reaction and Outlook
Obama's election was watched by some two million people in Washington DC, with crowds massed in the National Mall, and millions more saw television broadcasts worldwide.
Obama's policies were expected to focus on attempting to stave off economic depression by investing heavily in "public works" such as road building and refurbishing schools, and by supporting tax cuts for individuals and businesses. He had also promised to improve health care for people without insurance and to tackle climate change by promoting renewable energy sources. It was thought likely that he would redeploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and close the notorious prison complex at the Guantanamo Bay naval base on Cuba.
The Democratic majorities in both the Senate (the upper house of Congress, the bicameral federal legislature) and the House of Representatives (the lower house) gave him a powerful legislative position and his popularity in other countries meant that he would probably enjoy a "honeymoon" period of widespread international support at the start of his presidency.
Historical Context
The USA historically had been equivocal about granting its black citizens equal status with its white citizens. The Declaration of Independence (1776) proclaimed "all men are created equal" and the authors of the US constitution, which was ratified in 1791, put in place a democracy with open elections and governance at the local level. It was intended that government would reflect the will of the populace. However, the southern agrarian economy depended on the labour of black slaves. Black Africans were brought to the USA as slaves and the law defined them as property, not as people. They could be sold and traded, could not live as free people in many states, and were denied the right to vote.
The northern states saw slavery as a brake on industrialisation and as a moral problem. They tried through the 19th century to limit slavery and prevent its spread to new states as they entered the Union of American states. An abolitionist movement grew.
When Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was elected president of the USA in 1860, the Democratic South seceded from the Union. Southerners argued that the Confederate states (those that had seceded from the Union) had to declare war on the Union because the North had become like a foreign entity imposing its will on the South. The American Civil War (1861-65) followed, which was won by the industrialised and more populous North.
During the Reconstruction era (1865-75), the North tried to impose a thorough transformation throughout the country requiring the complete inclusion of black people. However, this was not successful and the southern states rejected any black right to power. The South reverted to back to segregation in spite of the existence of post-Civil War laws and constitutional amendments for racial equality. Newly freed slaves became indentured servants.
Through the late 1800s and early 1900s, laws were increasingly passed in the South that pushed black citizens into inferior schools, houses, and jobs. They were forced to sit separately on public transport and excluded from public interaction with whites.
Desegregation and economic enfranchisement of black people, however, was fed by industrialisation. In the first decades of the 20th century, black people migrated from the rural South to factory jobs in northern and midwestern cities. Many ended up living in ghettos in such cities as Chicago, Detroit, and New York.
In the late 1940s, black soldiers who had fought for the USA in World War II returned to homes in the South where they were excluded from participation in democracy, giving an added impetus for black leaders to end racial inequality and particularly to reverse segregation laws. A so-called "Second Reconstruction" in the 1950s saw broader support for the movement than before from churches, political parties, and the military.
The initial target of civil activism in the 1950s was segregated public transport and lunch counters in the South. In May 1954, a Supreme Court decision ended the "separate but equal" doctrine under which black people could be kept out of facilities reserved for white people, as long as "equal" facilities were available.
In the face of this, many southern states defended racial stratification, saying that social issues of that kind should be ruled by states and the federal government should not play a role.
It was during this period that Barack Hussein Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii. He moved with his family to Indonesia for four years, returning to Hawaii in the early 1970s.
Visits from out-of-state rights workers to push integration in the South were met with violence, and for a time local southern courts would not convict local whites who committed such violence. Aided by the advent of television and mass communication, however, the federal government under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson passed civil rights legislation in spite of southern opposition.
In the late 1960s, the federal government began a more aggressive integration programme that included hiring and college-admission quotas to force the entry of black people into some institutions. The government also transported African-American children from impoverished neighbourhoods to schools in white districts that were better run and funded.
However, such "Affirmative Action" was not embraced by all (northern or southern) white people, and equal-opportunity provisions were reined in after lawsuits were filed by qualified white people claiming that schools and companies were unfairly rejecting them in order to fulfil racially based quotas.
Obama, who had been one of only three black students at his secondary (high) school, went on to study political science at Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1983. His work experience included a year at a large business corporation and work in community projects in Chicago. In 1988 he entered Harvard Law School, graduating in 1991, then returning to Chicago to work as a civil rights lawyer.
Obama was elected to the state legislature of Illinois in 1996, but failed to win a seat in the House of Representatives in 2000. However, in 2004, he was elected to the Senate, taking his seat in 2005 as the third African-American to join the Senate since the Reconstruction era. His bid for the Democratic presidential nomination led to a fierce and dramatic contest with Hillary Rodham Clinton, who ceded defeat in June 2008. Using as his slogan "Yes we can", Obama went on to defeat his main rival in the presidential election, Republican Senator John McCain in November 2008.
