Obama's grace under pressure made lasting impact on African-Americans

As Barack Obama prepares to leave the White House, the first black president's legacy is secure with his fellow African-Americans. "He's had some ups and downs," said 17-year-old Brendan McCrae, "but I feel like he's been a pretty great president."
When the first African-American president was elected in 2008, Jesse Walker couldn't help but remember his late parents, who had brought him as a toddler from then-segregated Arkansas to Detroit, where his father had found factory work.
"How would they have felt to be alive when Barack Obama was elected?" asked Walker, 67, a retired Detroit city worker. "That cannot be taken away, no shape, form or fashion."
The family was part of the Great Migration of African-Americans to urban, industrial centres. They left the South because they were "tired of seeing that water fountain that says 'coloured' and 'white,' tired of separate but equal, tired of not having an education," Walker said. He called Obama's election "something that could never happen in the United States - and it did, twice."
Constitutionally limited to two four-year terms, Obama left office Friday, when president-elect Donald Trump was inaugurated. Obama's job approval rating this month is at 55 percent among all Americans, according to Gallup Poll data.
Perceptions of race relations, though, have deteriorated in the last two years, after a series of highly publicised killings by police of African-American suspects. Only 30 percent of Gallup respondents said the situation for blacks in the United States has improved under Obama, while 37 percent said the country had lost ground on the issue. Results were not broken down by ethnicity.
During Obama's waning days in the White House, many African-Americans looked beyond policies - on health care, the economy and wars in the Middle East - to voice admiration for Obama's poise and self-assurance in office.
Cecelia Ann Harper, a university student from Atlanta, Georgia, was visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington on Sunday, which was the birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr (MLK).
Obama, who led the dedication of the newly opened, long-planned museum in September on the National Mall, was scheduled to observe Monday's MLK holiday with a visit to a Washington homeless shelter.
Harper said she was personally inspired by Obama's example to "keep your head on straight" under pressure.
"When he went into the office and people were against him, he never lost his sense of composure," she said.
Raymond, an Oklahoma native who declined to give his last name, citing his position in the US Navy, said that Obama "displayed a level of class."
The president is "someone who should be an example and a role model - I believe he has done that in the face of some pretty significant opposition."
Brendan McCrae was a fifth grader in Lusby, Maryland, a small town on the Chesapeake Bay, when Obama was elected, and his mother made sure that he understood the gravity of the event.
"I just felt happy that I was seeing somebody that looked like me coming into office," said McCrae, now a 17-year-old high school senior.
He said that Obama's achievement as the first black president will be a "lasting legacy." "He's had some ups and downs," McCrae said, "but I feel like he's been a pretty great president."
Walker a lifelong Democrat, said that he wept when Obama was elected, but stopped reading the newspaper after the November elections because the thought of Trump's presidency made him nauseous.
"I have never had this feeling about Richard Nixon. I've never had this feeling about Ronald Reagan. I've never had this feeling that is just overflowing inside me about Donald Trump," he said.
Walker said that Obama in office achieved "meaningful dialogue" about race in America, despite opponents' efforts to "delegitimize" his presidency.
"It should galvanise us to not allow them to just wipe out [Obama's] presidency, and not let it be for naught," he said.