Obama Center opens; first visitors meet Obamas

first visitors – Barack and Michelle Obama personally greeted the first 100 visitors Friday at the newly opened Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, joining LeVar Burton for a school reading at a Chicago Public Library branch inside the center and later shaking hands with gue

CHICAGO — The first 100 people to step into the newly opened Obama Presidential Center weren’t just touring a building. They were being met.

On Friday. former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama personally greeted the initial visitors as they walked through the doors. arriving with former “Reading Rainbow” host LeVar Burton. In the Chicago Public Library branch inside the center, the group read “Where the Wild Things Are” to 25 school children.

When Obama read Maurice Sendak’s line about being “king of all the wild things,” Michelle Obama paused and interjected, “Although there were no kings,” to applause.

Later, the couple shook hands with awed guests against the backdrop of a colorful, 38-foot-tall painting depicting a map of Chicago stretching to the ceiling. The artwork was inspired by Carl Sandburg’s 1914 poem about the city: “stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders.”

For 18-year-old Houefa Agassounon from Chicago, the surprise visit landed like something she still couldn’t fully process. “It was perfect. It was great,” she said. “I was literally crying. I asked for a hug and everything.”

Agassounon said she wrote a letter to the Obama Foundation last year, asking if she could be there when it opened. Meeting the Obamas, she said, was a bonus. “This is just the greatest thing of my 18 years of life,” she said.

The Juneteenth opening came after a star-studded dedication ceremony in which the Obamas delivered rousing speeches to an audience that included three former presidents. their former first ladies. and a host of politicians. The crowd also included A-list celebrities, musicians, athletes, and others, while thousands more joined a livestream from a nearby park.

A weekend of events is planned for the sprawling campus on Chicago’s South Side near where the Obamas lived and where he began his political career. The site sits adjacent to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in the lakefront park, and not far from the University of Chicago.

The center’s grounds include a towering museum covering the political and personal realms of the nation’s first Black president and first lady. Its public spaces include a branch of the Chicago Public Library, a playground and athletic center, basketball courts, and a picnic area with grills.

The tower’s design is meant to depict four hands coming together in solidarity. Wrapped around one side are 5-foot tall concrete capital letters—an excerpt of Obama’s 2015 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march. The text begins, “You are America.”

For those trying to get in now, tickets for the general public are sold out through the end of November. But the people who managed to secure passes for the first day were met with the kind of moment they didn’t expect—meeting the Obamas themselves.

Obama Presidential Center Barack Obama Michelle Obama Juneteenth Chicago Chicago Public Library LeVar Burton Where the Wild Things Are Houefa Agassounon Carl Sandburg