Michelle Obama spoke directly to her husband when she stepped up to the podium at the Obama Center grand opening ceremony — then proceeded to bring him and members of the audience to tears.
And she didn’t stop there.
She ticked off highlights from her husband’s eight years in office, including ordering the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, “standing up for marriage equality” and “listening to science.”
Obama appeared to wipe away a tear as she praised him.
Michelle Obama also referenced the current “anxious and divisive times” and warned against being cynical or complacent as “everything feels so upside down.” She pitched the center as “a respite from all that.”
Read her full remarks below:
Well. My goodness.
I got my tissue in hand. I don’t know about all of you.
Wow. Hello, everyone, and what a beautiful day, right? Nothing like a project by my husband to bring out the sun.
Let me start by thanking Addison for that magnificent introduction, and for exemplifying the heart, excellence and determination that has blossomed right here on the South Side for a very long time.
I also want to send some love to everyone who made this day a reality. The construction workers, landscapers, designers, the architects, artists, chefs, our staff, our board members, our donors. Barack and I simply cannot thank you enough for the care and brilliance you poured into every square inch of this campus. I also want to recognize all of the elected officials and distinguished leaders from around the city, the state, the country, and, yes, the world. Thank you for being here to celebrate with us,
Especially to all of my fellow formers. To Joe and Jill, George and Laura, Bill and Hillary.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service to our country over so many years and for your constant friendship and support of our family. We love you guys. Truly.
Oh, to our daughters, Malia and Sasha, who will always be my babies. Even though we’re no longer playing hide and seek on the South Lawn with Beau or hosting sleepovers in the solarium – I see a lot of sleepover girls here –you both have grown into such brilliant and beautiful young women making your way out there in the world.
Thank you for bringing so much joy and spirit and energy to a life you had no voice in choosing. And for making us proud every step of the way. Love you babe.
Oh, so please indulge me for a moment, because I’m gonna take a little time to do something that I know my husband will not do today. And that is to fully sing his praises.
Barack, you gotta look at me.
I love that.
You told me all those years ago that you couldn’t promise me the world. But you could promise me an interesting life.And of course, you outdid yourself and managed to give me both.
I know it hasn’t always been easy, but there hasn’t been a single second through this experience that standing by your side hasn’t left me in awe.
Eight years in The Crucible and not once did you melt from the heat. Not once did you let it harden you. Instead, you used it to reveal your truest essence – your stubborn optimism and unflinching courage, your dazzling brilliance and unpretentious decency, your ferocious work ethic and absolutely unshakable moral fiber.
And to do it all as a first and the higher standard that comes with all that.
The claims that a US senator and constitutional law expert wasn’t qualified for the job, the lies about your birthright, your faith, your patriotism, the outrage when you stated the biological fact that if you’d had a son that he too would be Black.
Yet you were unflappable at every turn. Always focused, always calm, always looking at the long view to how absurd it is to even imagine that you might have buckled under the pressure, even once, lashed out in frustration, lost your temper. How absurd it is to imagine that you might have done anything but make our family and this entire country proud.
No, you were too busy.
I’m not done. Y’all. Not done. So much to say.
You were doing the people’s work, rescuing our economy, expanding health care, ending a war, ordering the bin laden raid, saving an auto industry, winning a peace prize. For keeping us safe from Ebola, regulating the banks, standing up for marriage equality, listening to science and comforting an entire nation in the face of unspeakable tragedies. And you did it all with such grace and class and cool that you made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park.
Your mother, Toot, Gramps – you are a tribute to their love. They are up there grinning and hugging today because you never forgot who you are and where you came from.
Single mother working hard to get by and get an education and show her son the world. Grandparents who didn’t have much but they had the perfect recipe to nurture your flame.
You never forgot the folks in the union halls and church basements here in Chicago, where you first put your ideals to the test. You never forgot all the voters you’ve registered, and students who taught and neighbors you organized. You never fell for the temptation of a quick fix or an easy payday.
You never changed from that idealistic summer associate who showed up on that rainy day when we first met without an umbrella.
You always gave us the very best within you, and in doing so, you reminded the rest of us that we could, too.
Barack, there are no words to express how proud I am of the way you showed up and continue to show up every single day. It has been an honor to be by your side.
You have made me a better person and have given us all an example that we should strive to emulate. And I hope you know, oh, there is truly no higher calling than that. All right.
To all of you joining us today, our invited guests and everyone listening and watching from afar.
The Obama Presidential Center was created as a beacon of hope, a monument to our unshakable values. The ones my husband has exemplified his entire life: equality, empathy, honesty, inclusion, fairness. Especially during these anxious and divisive times, it is so important that we remember that those values are not unique to my husband.
They are the same ones that your husbands and wives, your parents and children, your friends and neighbors exhibit and pass on every single day. Millions of people in this country wake up doing their very best to live decent and purposeful lives.
Yet we’re all tested in one way or another, and there are plenty of times we all fall short.
But deep down in our hearts and souls, we all know right from wrong. We know selflessness from greed, righteousness from injustice. We understand that we all rise and fall together, that every last one of us is an invaluable contributor to the greatness of America. And I’m talking about the workers living paycheck to paycheck, hoping to give their kids a better future. The teachers using their own money to take their students on field trips. The business owners struggling to meet payroll but refusing to close their doors. All those folks sweating over stoves to provide meals for their communities. Folks shivering in the freezing cold to deliver our packages. Picking up trash to keep our parks clean. Volunteers dedicating their weekends to coaching T-ball or directing the church choir, or mentoring a child.
That’s where the truth of this country lies. Not in grabbing as much as we can get for ourselves, or knocking folks down to prop ourselves up, but in the overwhelming goodness, the relentless striving, the quiet dignity that is inside all of us, our greatest hope is that this center can reflect back just a fraction of that light, that it can capture the beauty of who we all are, no matter what we look like or where we come from, or how much money we earn, or how we pray or vote or speak or love.
It’s why during our administration, we threw open the White House doors to all sorts of folks who don’t usually get to meet the President or First Lady.
The families pinch and pennies to send their first child to college. The teenagers, who know that a hot afternoon means the bullets start flying. The military spouses and children serving and sacrificing just like their loved ones in uniform. The native kid showing us that resilience and pride can never be stolen. The foragers and FFA members with calluses on their hands from feeding livestock. The immigrants proving what it truly means to be a dreamer.
These folks, these folks aren’t Americans too. They are America. They are the beating heart of this country. They are us and we are them.
And to ignore the simple truth, to refuse to respect the contributions and experiences of people who aren’t exactly like us, y’all puts us all at risk.
Failing to see the humanity in all people puts us all on a slippery slope. And once that slide starts, there’s no telling where it stops. A dangerous precedent that flies in the very face of our faith. And of the founding promise of this democracy that all of us, all of us are created equal, that each of us is a child of God with inherent value.
And no one, and I mean no one, has the right to sit in judgment of who’s American enough.
And that’s why, folks, we simply don’t have the luxury or time to be cynical or complacent, to wring our hands in despair, to wait for someone else to fix the problem.
Y’all, hope is all we have.
Because hope is the essential spark that lights the fire of change. But hope is a choice. Whether or not we use our voices to speak up is a choice. Voting is a choice. Being a decent human being is a choice. Believing that we still hold the power to build a country that reflects us all is a choice.
The Obama Presidential Center is a living testament to the power of choice, y’all. The historic example that millions of you gave the world about what this imperfect democracy has strived for and achieved. And an urgent call to go out there and do it again.
So I hope that when you walk through this campus and bring your children here, you are reminded of the power of choice and the steady work of change. The arduous, unglamorous march march up that mountain one foot after another, day after day, generation after generation, but I also hope you fully absorb the elation of achieving something together.
You know that feeling when you clear the tree line and see a vista that takes your breath away? A feeling that can never be erased? And I know that can be hard to grasp right now when everything feels so upside down. When fact and fiction run together. When folks seek to stifle speech, limit access to education, devalue diversity, erase the inconvenient parts of our history. When our phones constantly buzz with the latest outrage.
So I hope that this place can offer a respite from all that, at least for a little while.
I hope it can reignite the optimism and empathy and ambition that has always powered this country’s greatest change.
So we want you to come here and put away your phones and talk and laugh and cry, because you gonna cry and make new friends.
Get your hands dirty in my garden. Push your baby on a swing in the playground. Have a romantic picnic on the great lawn.
Because that’s the work of democracy. To being neighborly, taking care of public spaces, having some fun, enjoying each other, shaking out of the isolation and division that have crept too deeply into our lives.
And to my fellow South Siders.
I want you all to make this campus a part of your lives, be inspired by the world class art, check out the books from our beautiful public library and bring them back on time, drop some beats in the recording studio, hit some corner threes at home court, hold birthday parties, jump start clothing drives, host citywide clean up dates. Here. Use this campus to show off this place we call home.
This joyful place where Marian and Fraser Robinson taught their two kids to dream big.
This hopeful place where an unknown guy with an unknown name took flight. This stubbornly optimistic place where family after family scrapes and claws and laughs and dances their way to a better tomorrow.
That’s what this has always been about.
Barack and I have always said that this center is grounded in our stories, but it has never been about us. It’s never been for us. And it’s going to be here long after we’re gone.
So what it becomes and how it’s preserved, that work has to be done by all of us. Just like our democracy.
And thankfully, you have shown the world what we are capable of. You’ve proven that a lasting legacy isn’t an award or a name on a building or number of zeros in a bank account, but the difference we make in one another’s lives.
It’s about seeing each other and showing up for each other and carrying each other. When we’re weary or faltering or losing faith.
That’s how you build something that endures. And that’s what you all have done at every twist and turn of this extraordinary journey. You have protected and proclaimed the hope that beats within the heart of this campus. You’ve rekindled and renewed this untamable, unpredictable and unbreakable democracy.
And I know that you all are going to astonish us even more in the months and years ahead, because you all have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when we truly see each other, when we strive to bring out the best in ourselves and one another, oh, there is no limit to how high we can go.
Thank you all. I love you all. God bless you and God bless this country we love.
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