By Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

So Michelle Obama came to Kansas City the other day, speaking on a stage erected in the 18th and Vine district of the city, legendary for its role in African-American culture.

Her speech to a cheering, largely African-American crowd of thousands was significant because of something she conspicuously neglected to acknowledge: She is on the cusp of becoming the nation’s first black First Lady.

How gloriously full-circle we have come.

Here is a woman who is the modern-day equivalent of the people who made 18th and Vine justly famous: cosmopolitan, well-educated, professional black people. And yet she didn’t see fit to make reference to that fact. Such is the moment in American history the Obama campaign inhabits.

There Michelle Obama stood, a Perkin’s-size American flag stretched across the street as a backdrop, literally amid the ghosts of people who likely dreamt of but could hardly fathom such a day. She emphasized her hardscrabble upbringing on the South Side of Chicago and the struggles of her disabled father, but she also had this truth to say of herself and her husband, “Our story is the American dream.”

The crowd sang a rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” and was led in the Pledge of Allegiance. For sure, the Obamas can never appear too patriotic these days, but this struck me as a little much.

Do Michelle and Barack Obama transcend race, or are they simply very good at not reminding us of theirs in ways that might ruffle feathers? A bit of both.

On the one hand, Barack Obama is running his campaign on the faith that enough Americans are over the nation’s racist past that they are truly ready to elect a black candidate. And recent polling most certainly supports the contention, with Obama closing the gap on McCain in states such as Florida, Virginia, Nevada and Missouri.

At the same time, the Obama team is taking pains not to remind people — even predominantly black crowds — that this candidate is about to blow through not just a glass ceiling but a major cultural barrier.

The ghosts of 18th and Vine would understand.
People like Count Basie and Duke Ellington, who had to negotiate their success through a changing racial code. And the Negro Leagues baseball players, some of whom played at levels that exceeded the talents of white players, men they were not allowed to compete against.

In their day, black people often had to be better than white people to catch a break.

The mediocre white person could achieve, but for a black person to get far, they had to be stellar.

To a certain extent, that sort of gumption created Kansas City jazz, now known the world over. Modern-day edifices pay tribute to those accomplishments at 18th and Vine: the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

“Kansas City was a regular Mecca for young blacks from other parts of the country aspiring to higher things than janitor or chauffeur,” said bandleader Andy Kirk, quoted in the book Kansas City Jazz. Black people there “had their own theaters and all types of black entertainment, their own clubs, ballrooms, bars and grills, their own homes in residential area, and their own newspaper.”

That paper, The Kansas City Call, established in 1919, is still published. Michelle Obama gave her speech just steps from its offices.

The only reason this upper-middle-class black “Mecca” ever existed was because its people were not welcome elsewhere.

Yet today Michelle Obama is being compared to Camelot’s Jackie Kennedy for her ease with fashion, style and grace.

In her remarks, Obama did acknowledge receiving a quick “30-second tour” of the adjacent museums.

She noted the city was lucky to have such high quality exhibits. And, she gave a brief nod to the past saying, “We’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Yeah, sometimes even delicately walking amid their very shadows.

©2008, The Kansas City Star.
To reach Mary Sanchez call 816-234-4752 or send email to .
Distributed by Tribune Media Services