He entered the White House a living symbol, breaking a colour line that stood for 220 years.
Barack Obama took office, and race immediately became a focal point in a way that was unprecedented in American history. No matter his accomplishments, he seemed destined to be remembered foremost as the first black man to lead the world's most powerful nation.
But eight years later, Obama's racial legacy is as complicated as the president himself.
To many, his election was a step toward realising the dream of a post-racial society. He was dubbed the Jackie Robinson of politics. African-Americans, along with Latinos and Asians, voted for him in record numbers in 2008, flush with expectations that he'd deliver on hope and change for people of colour.
Some say he did, ushering in criminal justice reforms that helped minorities, protecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants from deportation, and appointing racially diverse leaders to key jobs, including the first two black attorneys general. These supporters say he deserves more credit than he gets for bringing America back from the worst recession since the Great Depression, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and a major expansion of health care that secured insurance for millions of minorities. They celebrate his family as a sterling symbol of black success.
But Obama also frustrated some who believe he didn't speak out quickly or forcefully enough on race or push aggressively enough for immigration reform.
And his presidency did not usher in racial harmony. Rather, both blacks and whites believe race relations have deteriorated, according to polls. Mounting tensions over police shootings of African-Americans prompted protests in several cities and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Perhaps most strikingly, the president's successor, Donald Trump, is seen by many as the antithesis of a colourblind society, a one-time leader of the "birther" movement that spread the falsehood that Obama was born in Africa. Trump's strong reliance on white voters was in sharp contrast to the multiracial coalition that gave Obama his two victories.
"President Obama represents the face of the future – multicultural America. Donald Trump represents the old racial order of the black-white divide," says Fredrick Cornelius Harris, director of the Center on African American Politics and Society at Columbia University. "And for the next decades to come, there will be a battle between those two viewpoints of what America is."
It took more than two centuries for America to elect a black president. It will take many years after he leaves office to sort out what it all meant.
 
"If he can do it, I can do it"
Two iconic images of the Obama presidency:
The president patiently bends over as a five-year-old black boy touches his head, after the child asked Obama if they had the same kind of hair.
A 106-year-old black woman joyfully dances with the president and first lady, beaming as she declares: "I am so happy. A black president. Yay!"
Born a century apart, these two visitors to the White House convey the potent symbolism of Obama's presidency, a luster that hasn't dimmed. For many black Americans, it's not so much what policies Obama proposed but his mere presence in the Oval Office that has mattered most.
"You can't put a price tag on that," says Loretta Augustine-Herron, a former community activist who worked with Obama in Chicago's Altgeld Gardens in the 1980s. "If he never did anything else for African-Americans, just the fact that he occupies the White House, it lets us see ourselves in a different light. We see a chance for us to fit into the United States society in a way we've never fit in.
Just knowing that opportunity is not everybody else's, it's OURS, too. ... The sky is the limit. And it was never that feeling before."
Perhaps nowhere are those sentiments stronger than at Altgeld Gardens, where a 20-something Obama honed his political skills as a community organiser.
It was there, in the shadow of rusted steel mills, where Obama had his first up-close exposure to a black community mired in poverty. In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama describes the sprawling housing project in "a perpetual state of disrepair" with crumbling ceilings, backed-up toilets and burst pipes. He helped residents agitate, rally and fight City Hall to improve their lives.
Three decades later, Altgeld is in the middle of a massive renovation. Crime and poverty persist, but there's also a sense of hope, especially for kids who, for the first time, see a president who looks like them when they walk by Obama's photo on their schoolroom walls.
Cheryl Johnson is among the few remaining residents who remember Obama's organising days. He plotted strategies with her mother, Hazel, a well-known environmental activist. Johnson, who followed in her footsteps, sees Obama as an inspiration.
His presidency, she explains, allowed people to say: "If he can do it, I can do it, too."
"It's the influence, the motivation that he has given to people who may have been hopeless in their life, like, 'I can't get this far,'" Johnson says. "Now you hear young people, young as five and six, saying, 'I'm going to be the next president of the United States.'"
Obama changed perceptions of black people, says Ellen Singletary, a youth specialist at Altgeld. "The media depicts us ... in such an unfair and defaming way," she says, "and to see the pride of who we really are demonstrated on the world stage means the world to me."
That attitude is part of what Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown professor and prominent African-American commentator, described in a New York Times op-ed as black America's "unrepentant love affair" with the president. That pride, he wrote, overlooks Obama's failings, including skimping on black cabinet appointees until his second term, forgoing the nomination of a black woman to the US Supreme Court and a "reluctance to highlight black suffering."
Still, Obama maintained an 80-90 per cent approval rating in the Gallup Poll among African-Americans for virtually his entire presidency.
Many black supporters are proud of how he weathered the birther movement, racial slurs, photos depicting him, among other things, as an African bone-through-the-nose witch doctor or an ape, and other indignities such as a Southern congressman interrupting the president's health care address by yelling, "You lie!"
"One of the sayings we have down in Alabama is when you wrestle with a pig, the pig enjoys it and you're the one that gets muddy," says Glennon Threatt, an assistant federal public defender in Birmingham, Alabama. "The president has not gotten in the mud.
"What he has done is shown that a black man can be a successful president and a successful husband and a successful father," he adds. "I think that's an extraordinary thing." (AP)
 
CONCLUDES TOMORROW.
 
 
 
Obama pens law review article on criminal justice challenges
 
President Barack Obama returned to his roots at the Harvard Law Review on Thursday, penning an article about progress his administration made in reforming the criminal justice system – and the challenges that remain for the next administration.
His commentary, "The President's Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform," addresses how presidents can exert influence over the criminal justice system, and how those who serve the president have a responsibility to translate that vision into practical results.
"How we treat citizens who make mistakes (even serious mistakes), pay their debt to society, and deserve a second chance reflects who we are as a people and reveals a lot about our character and commitment to our founding principles," Obama writes. "And how we police our communities and the kinds of problems we ask our criminal justice system to solve can have a profound impact on the extent of trust in law enforcement and significant implications for public safety."
In 1990, Obama was named the Harvard Law Review's first black president. The review was founded in 1887.
Obama writes in the new article that the country cannot afford to spend US$80 billion annually on incarceration, to "write off" the 70 million Americans with a criminal record, or to release 600,000 inmates each year without improving the programs that integrate them back into society.
"In addition, we cannot deny the legacy of racism that continues to drive inequality in how the justice system is experienced by so many Americans," he writes.
The outgoing president cautions that challenges toward true reform remain, including the passage of bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation, preventing guns from falling into the hands of those who pose a threat, and addressing the nation's opioid epidemic.
He also highlights the need for implementing "critical reforms" to forensic science and argues more technology is needed to enhance trust in and effectiveness of law enforcement. (AP)
"If he never did anything else for African-Americans, just the fact that he occupies the White House, it lets us see ourselves in a different light. ... We see a chance for us to fit into the United States society in a way we've never fit in. Just knowing that opportunity is not everybody else's, it's OURS, too. ... The sky is the limit. And it was never that feeling before." Loretta Augustine-Herron