Hlm.

82-83

Obama wrote poignantly in Dreams of the significance of Wash-ingtons ascendance in the

lives of Chicagos more than one million blacks. When Washington died, it was a devastating
blow to that community. Thousands attended his two-day wake in the lobby of city hall.
Everywhere black people appeared dazed, stricken, uncertain of direction, frightened of the
future, Obama wrote.
With Washingtons abrupt death, and considering his own modest organizing successes, Obama
grew dispirited.

Bobby Titcomb, his friend from the Punahou Academy, visited Obama around this time and
found his teenage chum far less optimistic and readily enthusiastic than during their Hawaiian
childhoods. One night, an extremely frustrated Obama arrived at his apartment near the
University of Chicago from a meeting of unhappy residents at a church. I just cant get things
done here without a law degree, Obama told Titcomb. Ive got to get a law degree to do
anything against these guys because theyve got their little loopholes and this and that. A law
degreethats the only way to work against these guys. It had not gone unnoticed by Obama
that Mayor Washington had a been a graduate of the Northwestern University School of Law,
and he had parlayed that lofty degree and his own personal charisma into a highly successful
political career. Indeed, Obama watched closely as Washington unabashedly wielded his power
to pour resources into the citys ailing minority communities.

Titcomb was not prone to Obamas activism and was grappling with a set of family problems at
the time, so he had only a partial understanding of Obamas personal disheartenment. But he
could see the resolve in his friends eyes. Obama would soon be accepted at the most prestigious
law school in the country, lifting him even higher into a world of intellectual elites and setting
him on a course to the kind of political power that even Harold Washington could only dream of
possessing.

Obama arrived at Harvard Law School with a unique pedigree. At twenty-seven, he was several
years older than his typical classmate, who most likely had come straight from a highly regarded
undergraduate school. Like many of the students, however, Obama had been privileged to
receive an elite primary and secondary education. Punahou Academy, Occidental College and
Columbia Universityall were excellent private schools. Yet Obamas life was already much
different from that of the typical Harvard Law student. He was a black man from Hawaii who
had been a community organizer in Chicago for three years; by now, he had also taken his first
trip to Kenya to explore his fathers roots. After his several years of a minimalist life in New
York, and several years of diligent work in Chicagos neighborhoods, Obama had attained a
maturity level and an extraordinary degree of self-discipline that would greatly abet his success
at Harvard.