The Atlantic: Ta-Nehisi Coates: 'The Emancipation of Barack Obama'

Source:The Atlantic- Barack H. Obama (Democrat, Illinois) 44th President of the United States.

"Why the reelection of the first black president matters even more than his election

In early 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, the Georgia politician Henry Benning appealed to the Virginia Secession Convention to join the Confederate cause. In making his case, he denounced the “Black Republican party” of President Abraham Lincoln, arguing that his election portended “black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything.” The predicted envelopment surely took longer than he thought, but by 2008, Benning looked like Nostradamus. After the black governors, the black legislators, the integrated juries, Benning’s great phantom—“black everything”—took human form in the country’s 44th president, Barack Obama.

From The Atlantic