Who remembers this?
The 44th President, of the United States Barack H. Obama belted out Amazing Grace, Black Baptist style at an AME funeral in 2015, before eulogizing one of the shooting victims from the Mother Emanuel tragedy in South Carolina.
But according to an ABC News report, he wasn’t certain he’d do it. He checked in with First Lady Michele Obama and close advisor Valerie Jarrett as they departed for the venue.
According to the report, he said, “I think if I sing, the church will sing with me,” Obama said, according to Jarrett, who recalled the story during a question answer session at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival.
And then… he preached. Listen for the call and response.
Obama, like Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson and Kamala Harris… the other three Black presidential candidates have strong ties with the Black Church. I examine how they were impacted by it and the common thread that connects them in their leadership styles as a result of those ties in my forthcoming book Call & Response: 10 Leadership Lessons from the Black Church (Amistad-HarperCollins/JVL Media, 2026).
One hint: it has nothing to do with singing, but involves the power of hope, one of the most transformational of the positive emotions, according to The Hope Theory in applied positive psychology.
I tell the story of my meeting the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson as a little girl at my home church in Dallas before his first presidential run and much later in life handling his media at the Black Caucus in D.C.; how Shirley Chisolm leaned into her Black church roots and network to launch her historic campaign; and how Former Vice President Kamala Harris not only did the same, but infused her Black Church leadership lessons throughout much of her most significant addresses, launching her historic, whirlwind and record-breaking 107 campaign literally on a prayer—with her pastor. Harris, is Baptist.
Such an honor to do this work, a book that has transformed me and hopefully it will you too.
It goes on presale this fall.
Happy Sunday,
LMS
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