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There
once
was
a young man who was
a student at Columbia
University. He had
never lived
in New York
City before. It was
1981 and, for
a year,
he spent
his free
time walking all around the city. He was
not only interested
in seeing famous sights like the Statue of Liberty that many tourists visited,
but he also wanted
to visit other
parts of the city, like Harlem. Harlem
is a famous neighborhood where many black families had
lived since
the 1920s. The young man visited
historic churches and the Apollo Theater. He
heard
Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, give a speech.
On
his long walks,
the young man kept
looking at people. He hoped
to find where he fit in. The young man’s
name was
Barack
Obama. Tall and skinny with an Afro, he was
half white and half
black. Often
he felt
he didn’t belong anywhere. He was
unsure of his future. What would he make of
his life?
Back
in 1981,
if
someone had
said,
“Guess who will be president of the United States in less than thirty years,”
Barack would never have said, “Me.”
Yet
on
January 20, 2009, that is
exactly what happened. Barack Hussein
Obama was
sworn in
as the 44th president.
Imagine
how surprised
that
college kid would be to find himself living in the White House!
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