Wintry Weather did not deter well over a million people in Washington, D.C., from crowding the National Mall to be present at the inauguration of the forty-fourth president of the United States, Barack Obama. On January 20th, 2009, Obama took the oath of office on the same Bible with which Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president, had been sworn in. In cities and towns around the globe, people gathered to watch the ceremony on gigantic outdoor monitors or on home television screens. Jubliant residents of the Kenyan village where Obama’s father was born also witnessed the historic event: the swearing-in of the first African-American U.S. president. As the Obama family made their way to a platform at the west front of the Capitol building, Michelle Obama held the Lincoln Bible. Daughters Malia and Sasha excitedly stood by, seven-year-old Sasha atop a booster step. Echoing the theme chosen by the Inaugural Committee – “A New Birth of Freedom,” commemorating the two-hundredth anniversary of Lincoln’s birth – Barack Obama closed his inaugural speech with the words “Let it be said [that] we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

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