Beforeword: The lesson of Juneteenth: hope may lay the foundation, but love is what opens the door to freedom and keeps it open.

As I watched the official opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center from here in Nairobi, I found myself connecting threads. I was struck by how Juneteenth, Obama’s Kenyan ancestry, and June’s theme of love converged in one moment.

Story of freedom and hope

Juneteenth tells the story of freedom that arrived late. And is a reminder that hope can travel a long road before reaching its destination. And it is that hope that shaped Obama’s presidential journey and is now the bedrock of his Presidential Center.

The opening of this Center is on the surface the dedication of a building. But more than that it is a house built from hope—a hope nurtured by generations who believed that freedom could be broader, justice more accessible, and opportunity not reserved for only the few.

Yet hope alone does not build houses. Love also does.

Story of love

Love is woven through this story. Listening to Michelle love on her husband, retelling his myriad accomplishments with admiration and pride. The love of family that shapes character long before the world takes notice. The love of country manifested in selfless service. The love that believes a nation can become more faithful to its ideals than it was yesterday.

Juneteenth itself is a testament to that kind of love. It celebrates those who continued to believe in freedom even when freedom had not yet reached them. Those who held fast to dignity when circumstances denied it. Those who imagined a future larger than their present reality.

Stories rarely belong to one place

As a Jamaican-Canadian who’s lived in various countries and now living in Kenya, I am aware that stories rarely belong to one place. They cross oceans. They carry names, dreams, and unfinished aspirations.

The Presidential Center is one such story that stretches from the village of Nyang’oma Kogelo off the shores of Lake Victoria, Kenya to the South Side of Chicago. From a Kenyan father to an American President, from possibility to legacy.

The first American President of African ancestry meant the rules were different, the expectations were higher. It’s what led Ta-Nehesi Coates to say: “For eight years he walked on ice and never fell.” An imagery used to describe the extraordinary scrutiny and constraints that accompanied Obama’s presidency as the first Black president of the United States.

He had to strike the balance of carefulness and calm in navigating political, racial, and cultural expectations with an almost impossible degree of precision. And as Michelle highlighted, he did so guided by an unshakable moral compass. And what we saw at the opening of the Center is testament to not only President Obama successfully getting through two terms of service—eight years—but that he came through to the other side true to himself as a Black man, a faithful husband and a dependable father.

Standing here in Kenya, where part of that presidential story began, I am reminded that the hope that fuels the Obama’s is never built alone. Nor was it the work of one man alone. It was carried by those who crossed oceans before him, those who marched before him, and those who loved him enough to believe that history could bend toward a wider freedom.

And just as how it is installed on the wall within the Center, this hope is constructed—intention by intention, through sacrifice, courage, partnership, and love—and to be installed in each of us.

I titled this reflection the “The House That Hope Built” drawing from Billy Brown’s song of the same title. The song questions whether hope is real while the Presidential Center shows what hope actually builds when it’s rooted in love, lineage, and legacy. A flip of the script, as it were.

The Center is a library, a museum, and the people’s house.

It is the ongoing work and enduring partnership between Barack and Michelle Obama—two people who choose to widen the circle of freedom for those who come after them.

And perhaps that is the lesson of Juneteenth: hope may lay the foundation, but love is what opens the door to freedom and keeps it open.

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In creative solidarity, Dee