African American History, African American Politics, President Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Ta-Nehisi Coates, KOLUMN Magazine, KOLUMN

The Making of a Black President

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The Making of a Black President


This short animation uses recordings from Coates’s conversations with Obama to illustrate the young president’s doubts and convictions along the way.

African American History, African American Politics, President Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Ta-Nehisi Coates, KOLUMN Magazine, KOLUMN[mc4wp_form id=”6042″]


Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, (Born September 30, 1975) is an American writer, journalist, and educator. Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic, where he writes about cultural, social and political issues, particularly as they regard African-Americans. Coates has worked for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, O, and other publications. In 2008 he published a memoir, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. His second book, Between the World and Me, was released in July 2015. It won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and is a nominee for the Phi Beta Kappa 2016 Book Awards. He was the recipient of a “Genius Grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2015. (Wikipedia)