2011/09/14 by Bill Schwarz · 6 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Photography and Visual Culture #Art, Politics, and Modernism #Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration #Victory #Presidency #Politics #Civil rights #Law #Sociology #White (mutation) #Gender studies #Political science #History
paper · doi:10.1093/hwj/dbr018
published in History Workshop Journal 72(1), 138-155 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2011/09/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
On 4 November 2008, the night when the US election results were made public, Obama and his family appeared at a victory celebration in Chicago. In his speech Obama alluded to the history of US Civil Rights which, he implied, made possible his own electoral victory. The historical relations between Civil Rights and the Obama presidency are complex and a matter of continuing political dispute. Indeed, even on the night of 4 November, at the very moment when Obama's supporters were most able to celebrate the future of his presidency, this historical past was a matter of contention. How that past registered in this political present marks the conceptual crux of the article. Two themes are followed here: first, the role of photography as the medium by which the past entered the present; and second, the juxtaposition of the images of young black girls during the height of the Civil Rights struggles with those of the more contemporary images of the Prsident Elect's young daughters, Malia and Shasha. From these contrasted representations of black femininity were presented the means by which the future of America could be imagined.