Former US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday evening in Chicago.Sipa via AP
Former First Lady Michelle Obama gave a stirring speech at the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago on Tuesday evening. In it, she reminded Americans of her own experiences with artificial insemination and made some not-so-subtle jabs at Donald Trump.
For Obama, the evening was a very personal affair, as Chicago is her hometown. Her mother, Marian Robinson, died in May at the age of 86. And she delivered her speech at the United Center, a sports arena less than a mile from her alma mater, Whitney Young Magnet High School, the hotbed of competitive athletes that shaped how she learned to understand power. In her 2018 book Becomeshe wrote:
During my first months at Whitney Young College, I got a glimpse of something that had previously been invisible: the structure of privilege and connection that looked like a network of half-hidden ladders and guide ropes hovering above us, ready to connect some, but not all, of us to heaven.
The nuanced understanding of power was evident in Tuesday’s speech. Her tone invoked the black gospel and even elicited a shout and response from the crowd, urging them to “do something!” before returning the call. At one point, she quoted her popular phrase, “When they go low, we rise high.”
“Reaching high doesn’t mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when you’re faced with viciousness and cruelty,” Obama said. “Reaching high means taking the harder path…reaching high means taking a firm stand against hate.”
These combative words matched the energy that has reignited the Democratic Party over the past four weeks. Kamala Harris’ rise to the top of the ballot electrified the base, changing the mood and bringing in millions of dollars in donations. Obama targeted specific Republican attacks, such as IVF. In BecomeObama wrote with a pinch of humor about her own experiences.
Barack, she wrote, “read all the IVF literature and talked to me all night about it, but his only real duty was to show up at the doctor’s office and give some sperm.”
Jokes circulated on stage at the Democratic National Convention, including one that brought the house down. Obama mocked Trump’s accusation during the first debate that immigrants were “pouring” across the border to “take black people’s jobs,” and recalled black TikTok creators who have since turned the action into a meme.
“Who tells him that the job he is looking for might be one of those black jobs?” she joked.
After her graduation, CNN’s Anderson Cooper called Obama’s speech “the most effective and powerful speech I have ever heard.”
