Daily Herald opinion: A place of hope and history: Obama Presidential Center offers insight and an ode to community

Following Thursday’s star-studded dedication, the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago opens to the public today, revealing a museum that chronicles the life and career of our 44th president and a community campus that embraces so much more.

It’s fitting that the center honoring Barack Obama welcomes its first public visitors on Juneteenth. Those nimble enough to have snapped up tickets — currently sold out until early November — will stand in the “Hope and Change” lobby and then move on to survey exhibits that include “Toward a More Perfect Union,” which traces “the push and pull of democratic progress” and highlights key movements for change.

At the dedication Thursday, Valerie Jarrett told attendees — which included former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Joe Biden — that the center was not a monument to the Obamas.

“This is a tribute to all those who made their journey possible,” said Jarrett, CEO of the Obama Foundation. “Inside this museum, and throughout this magnificent campus, you're going to find the stories of ordinary people who did extraordinary things, stories that show the inevitable zig and zag of our efforts to perfect this nation, but that nonetheless paved the way for Barack Obama's presidency and everything achieved during his eight years in office.”

Upper floors showcase those achievements and feature memorabilia and clips. There’s even a full-size replica of the Oval Office, where children can sit at the desk, envision themselves at the White House and view a copy of the letter Bush left Obama.

But most of the 19.3-acre campus doesn’t require tickets. On its grounds are a new branch of the Chicago Public Library, a basketball court, barbecue grills, a playground, sledding hill and gardens.

“This is a campus for everybody,” Jarrett said Thursday.

And we love that aspect. Yes, presidential centers pay political homage to their namesakes, helping frame their legacy for future generations. But adding community amenities gives the public a place to play, to picnic and, perhaps, to ponder how they too can help “perfect our nation.”

The South Side location is meaningful as well, and on Thursday Obama called it “an acknowledgment that so much of what I hold most dear I owe to the people of this city and the people of the surrounding neighborhoods.”

Barack Obama arrived in Chicago when he was just 23. Here, he reminded the crowd, is where he met Michelle, started his family and launched his first campaign for state senator. Here, he said, is where he found his purpose and his faith.

Much has been made of the 225-foot-tall museum tower, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Dubbed by some the Obamalisk, the facade bears a passage from the 2015 speech Obama delivered in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 50th anniversary of the noted civil rights march.

The words, spelled with massive concrete letters, wrap around the building, making them difficult to read in full. But they send an important message, even to those who are not Obama fans:

“You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”

Now — on the eve of America’s 250th birthday — those words stand in stark and eloquent contrast to the “I” messages that dominate so much of the current rhetoric coming out of Washington.

The Obama Presidential Center is but a drive away to those of us who live in the suburbs. We urge you to plan a visit, to relive unique moments in history, to absorb what this center brings to Chicago.

“Regardless of your politics,” culture critic Philip Kennicott recently wrote in The Washington Post, “you must at least credit the building with this: It wants to be a good neighbor, and that is no mean thing to aspire to.”

We strongly agree.