My Older Relatives Were Certain Barack Obama Would Be Assassinated

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

I remember 2008 very well. I’d always been told that this country would never have a Black president, and I believed it.

Then came a senator from Chicago by the name of Barack Obama. He was charismatic, young, backed by Oprah, and it looked like he would be the next president of the United States. Yes We Could and Yes We Did!

There was a collective sense of pride and joy amongst Black Americans. The morning after the election where he comfortably beat John McCain from Arizona there was literally something sweet in the air.

I didn’t know a soul who wasn’t rooting for Barack Obama.

However, a few of my older relatives, born in the Mississippi Delta between the 1910s and 1940s, did not want him to win. They were terrified he would be taken away like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and many other Black men before him who wanted to progress this country.

My granny, born in 1916 and suffering from dementia, simply said “they gone kill him.”

My cousin, born in the 1930s, said the same thing. He predicted that Obama wouldn’t serve a four year term because some white supremacist would shoot him.