017 - Strip Tees No. 3: "The Day the Dream Came Alive!"
The Obama Era may officially be vintage, but "Hope" never goes out of style
Strip Tees is a recurring series in which I write
about t-shirts I like
Do you remember where you were on November 4, 2008 when it was announced that the United States of America had elected Barack Hussein Obama to become its 44th president? You might recall it was a particularly notable victory, because for the first time in the 232 years since declaring itself an independent, self-governing nation, America had elected someone born in Hawaii.
Oh yeah, also someone who wasn’t white.
I with my girlfriend at the time in her StuyTown apartment, watching the returns come in as spontaneous celebrations began whipping up outside; hoots, hollers, and honks along 14th Street ecstatically audible through the window as we jumped out of bed, all smiles, to take a look. It was a decisive win for the one-term Illinois senator, called as polls closed on the west coast, with nearly 200 more electoral and 10,000,000 more popular votes than his Republican opponent John McCain. No credible allegations of fraud or voter manipulation. No recounts or judicial decisions required. There was no doubt about it: the White House belonged to a Black Man. It was truly spectacular to see.
For the roughly 40 million Americans who identified as Black at the time, it was also the realization of a long-harbored dream that may have seemed impossible in a country that has alternately been spelled with three K’s. That dream was legendarily crystallized in a speech by Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. You know the speech. Pretty, pretty, pretty good speech.
In that speech, MLK namechecked the State of Georgia three separate times. Georgia was the great reverend’s home state, having been born in Atlanta 34 years prior and —after stints in Boston, MA and Montgomery, AL — where he had resettled by the time he helped lead the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
45 years after Dr. King’s speech and 10 miles south of his birthplace on Auburn Avenue, the students of S.L. Lewis Elementary School in College Park, GA gathered to watch President-Elect Obama take his historic Oath of Office, allowing him to drop the ‘Elect’ from his honorific and officially assume his role as Chief Executive of the United States. In commemoration of such a consequential, unprecedented, once-in-many-generations event, who I can only assume was an artistically-inclined pupil of S.L. Lewis designed a t-shirt, which I can only assume was made available in limited quantities and provided to students and faculty on Inauguration Day.
The clever illustration drawn in a deft child’s hand (had to be a fifth grader, right?) links past to present. There is Martin Luther King. Jr: arms crossed in a self-assured stance, head held high, eyes fixed towards the future, expression settled in a confident half-smile. Above him in a thought bubble: his imagined dream taking shape as the newly sworn in POTUS. The fact that MLK Day was celebrated that year on Monday, January 19 — the eve of Obama’s inauguration on its customary January 20 date —makes the connection between these two iconic men, captured in this simple graphic tee, all the more magical.
It has now been 16 years since “the dream came alive,” and it may feel to some that we have since gone back to bed and are currently paralyzed in a nightmare-ridden sleep. All the more reason to hold tight to this t-shirt. For my money, in this particular political moment, there is no more inspiring work of wearable children’s art to encourage the remembrance of good times behind us and the reassurance of hope for better times ahead.
Shop this shirt and many more at quizdaddys.com