Michelle Obama writes new chapter with “The Light We Carry”
The daughter of a water pump operator and a stay-at-home mom from the South Side of Chicago became living history in January 2009 when she strode into the White House as the first lady to America’s first African American president. This was not the life expected for little Black girls born in the 1960s. But it happened to Michelle Obama.
“A girl like me, she was never supposed to be up there next to Jacqueline Kennedy and Dolley Madison,” she said when her official portrait by artist Sharon Sprung was unveiled alongside the one of her husband, Barack Obama, during a September ceremony at the White House. “She was never supposed to live in this house, and she definitely wasn’t supposed to serve as first lady.”
The portraits, she added, are “a reminder that there’s a place for everyone in this country … whether you’re a kid taking two buses and a train just to get to school; or a single mother who is working two jobs to put some food on the table; or an immigrant just arriving, getting your first apartment, forging a future for yourself in a place you dreamed of. It’s a place where everyone should have a fair shot.”
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