forever remember how many people stood outside for many more hours than I
did, convinced it was worth it to endure the chill. We’d learn later that nearly
two million people had flooded the Mall, arriving from all parts of the country, a
sea of diversity, energy, and hope stretching for more than a mile from the U.S.
Capitol past the Washington Monument.
After church, Barack and I headed to the White House to join up with Joe
and Jill, along with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their wives,
all of us gathering for coffee and tea before motorcading together to the Capitol
for the swearing in. At some point earlier, Barack had received the authorization
codes that would allow him to access the country’s nuclear arsenal and a briefing
on the protocols for using them. From now on, wherever he went, he’d be
closely trailed by a military aide carrying a forty-five-pound briefcase containing
launch authentication codes and sophisticated communications devices, often
referred to as the nuclear football. That, too, was heavy.
For me, the ceremony itself would become another one of those strange,
slowed-down experiences where the scope was so enormous I couldn’t fully
process what was going on. We were ushered to a private room in the Capitol
ahead of the ceremony so that the girls could have a snack and Barack could take
a few minutes with me to practice putting his hand on the small red Bible that
had belonged 150 years earlier to Abraham Lincoln. At that same moment, many
of our friends, relatives, and colleagues were finding their seats on the platform
outside. It occurred to me later that this was probably the first time in history that
so many people of color had sat before the public and a global television
audience, acknowledged as VIPs at an American inauguration.
Barack and I both knew what this day represented to many Americans,
especially those who’d been a part of the civil rights movement. He’d made a
point of including the Tuskegee Airmen, the history-making African American
pilots and ground crews who fought in World War II, among his guests. He’d
also invited the group known as the Little Rock Nine, the nine black students
who in 1957 had been among the first to test the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board
of Education decision by enrolling at an all-white high school in Arkansas,
enduring many months of cruelty and abuse in the name of a higher principle. All
of them were senior citizens now, their hair graying and shoulders curving, a sign
of the decades and maybe also the weight they’d carried for future generations.
Barack had often said that he aspired to climb the steps of the White House
because the Little Rock Nine had dared to climb the steps of Central High
School. Of every continuum we belonged to, this was perhaps the most