CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- Thousands of supporters were expected at a Saturday rally in Springfield, Illinois, to see the debut of Sen. Barack Obama and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as a presidential ticket.

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden is Sen. Barack Obama's choice to be his vice-presidential running mate.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, announced his selection of Biden as his running mate with a 3 a.m. text message and a statement on his official Web site.

"Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee," the text message said.

"Joe and I will appear for the first time as running mates this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois -- the same place this campaign began more than 19 months ago," Obama said in an e-mail sent to supporters Saturday morning.

"I'm excited about hitting the campaign trail with Joe, but the two of us can't do this alone," he wrote. "We need your help to keep building this movement for change."

Before the text messages were distributed, multiple Democratic sources confirmed to CNN early Saturday that Obama wanted the Delaware senator as his vice president.

On Friday, CNN learned three Democrats who had been considered contenders for the No. 2 spot, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, had been ruled out.

"Sen. Obama has continued in the best traditions for the vice presidency by selecting an exceptionally strong, experienced leader and devoted public servant," Clinton said in a written statement Saturday morning.

"Sen. Biden will be a purposeful and dynamic vice president who will help Sen. Obama both win the presidency and govern this great country."

Biden's stock rose earlier this week after he returned from a two-day trip to the Republic of Georgia after Russian troops invaded.

Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, brings decades of experience that could help counter GOP attacks on Obama's lack of experience in foreign policy.

Sen. John McCain's campaign quickly reacted to word that Biden would be Obama's running mate, calling attention to Biden's past comments about Obama's experience.

"There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama's lack of experience than Joe Biden," McCain campaign spokesman Ben Porritt said in a written statement.

"Biden has denounced Barack Obama's poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing -- that Barack Obama is not ready to be president.

In a debate during the Democratic primary contest, Biden raised questions about other candidates' foreign policy experience.

"Who among us is going to be able on Day One to step in and end the war? Who among us understands what to do about Pakistan? Who among us is going to pick up the phone and immediately interface with Putin and tell him to lay off Georgia because Saakashvili is in real trouble. Who among us knows what they're doing? I have 35 years of experience," Biden said.

During another debate, moderator George Stephanopoulos referred to some of Biden's comments on Obama.

"You were asked, 'Is he ready?' You said, 'I think he can be ready, but right now, I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training,'" Stephanopoulos said.

"I think I stand by that statement," Biden replied.

Biden, in a July interview, said he would choose Obama's judgment over John McCain's war record and foreign policy experience.

"But 20 years of experience that has not been very solid in terms of projecting what was going to happen just doesn't make you a better commander-in-chief," Biden said. "We don't need as a commander-in-chief a war hero. John's a war hero. We need someone with some wisdom."

Biden abandoned his own White House run after a poor showing in Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses. He also ran for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination but dropped out after charges of plagiarism in a stump speech. Learn more about Biden

The 65-year-old was first elected to the Senate in 1972. Shortly afterward, his first wife and daughter were killed in a car accident. He considered resigning, but decided to continue with his political career.

Biden is serving out his sixth term, making him Delaware's longest-serving senator.

He is married and has three children. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware and got a law degree from Syracuse.

In 1988, Biden suffered an aneurysm and nearly died but has recovered fully.

One of Biden's grandfathers was a Pennsylvania state senator, according to the Almanac of American Politics.

Biden will make his first big speech as the vice-presidential candidate on Wednesday, August 27 -- the third night of the Democratic convention.

Racism Still Alive, They Just Be Concealin It

As many of you know Barack won. Now this isn't a victory for us African Americans but for us Americans in general. I applaud Nas for changing his album name. Clearly a publicity stunt in my opinion. Why Ni**er? Why not Successful Black Man? That would ruffle the feather of the big wigs of the label & win my support. Anyway I also have gained some respect for Nas for dropping "Black President" which is a nice track with a great meaning. Though I'm not a big fan of Nas. He has been making some good moves lately. Hero was a cool track aswell. Hats off to Nas.

I won't mention Slave & Master which was nice....

Prodigy shut up for once. Your so ignorent. You give all black men a bad name by claiming all this & that like your Mr. Commmunity. Just keep your opinion to yourself cause your so hypocritical. Aren't you in jail or something?

It seems racial songs have been very popular nowadays. Deservedly so seeing how racial tension have increased alot lately. The Kramer, Six Letter Words among others. I think unification is essential in the future of America. We can't continue to fight and kill each other like a bunch of wild animals. Sickening. Even more is those who try to help are the ones being killed due to the ignorance of the killer.

But I have to say that Radio hip hop has been very positive of late. More dancing not so much hoes, niggaz, gatz & coke. Thats one thing everyone can be happy about though the songs are extremely repetitive especially after playing the same 10 songs ALL DAY! Only thing is people like Soulja Boi & Franchise Boys should stick to the dancing and other topics besides gun & violence cause it's not believable. But they do relieve the mind of their listeners with their music. Which is a great thing since life is so hard now.

But while I have certain opinions & feelings on certain rappers, singers & musicans (artist in general). I must applaud them all for doing what they are doing. They shining light on to someones life who really enjoys that particular artist's music.

Barack Obama Wins!!!!!!

By DAVID ESPO and STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday after a grueling marathon, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.

Campaigning on an insistent call for change, Obama outlasted former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in a historic race that sparked record turnout in primary after primary, yet exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.

The tally was based on public declarations from delegates as well as from another 15 who have confirmed their intentions to the AP. It also included 11 delegates Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 30 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana later in the day. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination.

The 46-year-old first-term senator will face John McCain in the fall campaign to become the 44th president. The Arizona senator campaigned in Memphis during the day, and had no immediate reaction to Obama's victory.

Clinton stood ready to concede that her rival had amassed the delegates needed to triumph, according to officials in her campaign. They stressed that the New York senator did not intend to suspend or end her candidacy in a speech Tuesday night in New York. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to divulge her plans.

Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy — all harnessed to his own innate gifts as a campaigner.

With her husband's two-White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former first lady and second-term senator ready, she said, to take over on Day One.

But after a year on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became something of an overnight political phenomenon.

"We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come," he said that night in Des Moines.

A video produced by Will I. Am and built around Obama's "Yes, we can" rallying cry quickly went viral. It drew its one millionth hit within a few days of being posted.

As the strongest female presidential candidate in history, Clinton drew large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama's were bigger still. One audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when he blew his nose on stage; a crowd of 75,000 turned out in Portland, Ore., the weekend before the state's May 20 primary.

The former first lady countered Obama's Iowa victory with an upset five days later in New Hampshire that set the stage for a campaign marathon as competitive as any in the last generation.

"Over the last week I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice," she told supporters who had saved her candidacy from an early demise.

In defeat, Obama's aides concluded they had committed a cardinal sin of New Hampshire politics, forsaking small, intimate events in favor of speeches to large audiences inviting them to ratify Iowa's choice.

It was not a mistake they made again — which helped explain Obama's later outings to bowling alleys, backyard basketball hoops and American Legion halls in the heartland.

Clinton conceded nothing, memorably knocking back a shot of Crown Royal whiskey at a bar in Indiana, recalling that her grandfather had taught her to use a shotgun, and driving in a pickup to a gas station in South Bend, Ind., to emphasize her support for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax.

As other rivals quickly fell away in winter, the strongest black candidate in history and the strongest female White House contender traded victories on Super Tuesday, the Feb. 5 series of primaries and caucuses across 21 states and American Samoa that once seemed likely to settle the nomination.

But Clinton had a problem that Obama exploited, and he scored a coup she could not answer.

Pressed for cash, the former first lady ran noncompetitive campaigns in several Super Tuesday caucus states, allowing her rival to run up his delegate totals.

At the same time, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., endorsed the young senator in terms that summoned memories of his slain brothers while seeking to turn the page on the Clinton era.

In a reference that likened former President Clinton to Harry Truman: "There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a new frontier. He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely respected in the party."

Merely by surviving Super Tuesday, Obama exceeded expectations.

But he did more than survive, emerging with a lead in delegates that he never relinquished, and proceeded to run off a string of 11 straight victories.

Clinton saved her candidacy once more with primary victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, beginning a stretch in which she won primaries in six of the final nine states on the calendar, as well as in Puerto Rico.

It was a strong run, providing glimpses of what might have been for the one-time front-runner.

But by then Obama was well on his way to victory, Clinton and her allies stressed the popular vote instead of delegates. Yet he seemed to emerge from each loss with residual strength.

Obama's bigger-than-expected victory in North Carolina on May 6 offset his narrow defeat in Indiana the same day. Four days later, he overtook Clinton's lead among superdelegates, the party leaders she had hoped would award her the nomination on the basis of a strong showing in swing states.

Obama lost West Virginia by a whopping 67 percent to 26 percent on May 13. Yet he won an endorsement the following day from former presidential rival and one-time North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Clinton administered another drubbing in Kentucky a week later. This time, Obama countered with a victory in Oregon, and turned up that night in Iowa to say he had won a majority of all the delegates available in 56 primaries and caucuses on the calendar.

There were moments of anger, notably in a finger-wagging debate in South Carolina on Jan. 21.

Obama told the former first lady he was helping unemployed workers on the streets of Chicago when "you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart."

Moments later, Clinton said that she was fighting against misguided Republican policies "when you were practicing law and representing your contributor ... in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago."

And Bill Clinton was a constant presence and an occasional irritant for Obama. The former president angered several black politicians when he seemed to diminish Obama's South Carolina triumph by noting that Jesse Jackson had also won the state.

Obama's frustration showed at the Jan. 21 debate, when he accused the former president in absentia of uttering a series of distortions.

"I'm here. He's not," the former first lady snapped.

"Well, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes," Obama countered.

There were relatively few policy differences. Clinton accused Obama of backing a health care plan that would leave millions out, and the two clashed repeatedly over trade.

Yet race, religion, region and gender became political fault lines as the two campaigned from coast to coast.

Along the way, Obama showed an ability to weather the inevitable controversies, most notably one caused by the incendiary rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

At first, Obama said he could not break with his longtime spiritual adviser. Then, when Wright spoke out anew, Obama reversed course and denounced him strongly.

Clinton struggled with self-inflicted wounds. Most prominently, she claimed to have come under sniper fire as first lady more than a decade earlier while paying a visit to Bosnia.

Instead, videotapes showed her receiving a gift of flowers from a young girl who greeted her plane.

Delegrates finalized for Oregon still no winner....

A week after Oregon's Democratic primary, the top two candidates have divvied up delegates that'll help decide the presidential nomination.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama won 31 of Oregon's 52 delegates, giving him a total of 1,978. The winner must collect 2,026 to capture the Democratic presidential nod.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton won the remaining 21 delegates. She now has commitments from 1,780 delegates.

Of Oregon's 52 delegates, 34 are apportioned by congressional district and 18 are apportioned by statewide totals. Obama won 11 statewide delegates and 20 congressional district nods. Clinton won seven statewide delegates and 14 congressional district representatives.

The candidates are preparing for the June 1 Puerto Rico primary, which has 55 delegates at stake. The primary season ends Tuesday, June 3 with primaries in South Dakota and Montana. The two states have a combined 47 delegates at stake.

Obama won Oregon's May 20 primary with about 60 percent of the vote.

Serious dude needs 48 more delegrates while Hilary needs over 200.....When will it stop? This is getting ridiculous.

Opponents distorting Obama's remarks on small-town values

WASHINGTON -- Does Barack Obama really think small-town Americans are a bunch of Bible-thumping, immigrant-resenting, gun-toting rednecks who are bitter about their lot in life?

The answer, Obama says, is a resounding no. And he's praying all those God-fearing, blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania believe him.

"It may be that I chose my words badly. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last," Obama told a group of steelworkers Monday in Pittsburgh.

Obama's latest mea culpa came as his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, again cast the Illinois senator as a condescending snob over statements he made last week to a group of well-heeled donors in California.

In his original remarks, Obama was describing his efforts to win the support of predominantly white working-class voters who had suffered economically during President George W. Bush's presidency.

"It's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," he said.

The comment has caused political headaches for Obama since it was first made public on April 11.

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Monday called Obama's comment "elitist" and said they had disparaged hard-working Americans.

Obama defended his use of the word "bitter" to describe economically challenged American voters, saying people are "angry and frustrated with their leaders for not listening to them; for not fighting for them."

He said Clinton and McCain have badly distorted the intent of his remarks, and that he never intended to demean small-town or rural values.

"I'm a person of deep faith, and my religion has sustained me through a lot in my life," Obama told journalists in Washington later Monday.

"I represent a state with a large number of hunters and sportsmen, and I understand how important these traditions are to families ... And, contrary to what my poor word choices may have implied or my opponents have suggested, I've never believed that these traditions or people's faith has anything to do with how much money they have."

The tempest is potentially damaging to Obama in Pennsylvania, where polls had shown he was cutting into Clinton's lead ahead of the state's primary on April 22.

Obama, who has a 160-delegate lead over Clinton in Democratic race, is hoping a win or strong showing in Pennsylvania will escalate pressure on the former first lady to end her White House bid.

Both candidates have been wooing blue-collar male voters who make up a sizable portion of the Democratic electorate in Pennsylvania. Obama made a now-infamous visit last month to a bowling alley in Altoona, Pa. -- where he threw several gutter balls -- and fed a baby calf milk from a bottle during a campaign stop at a dairy farm.

For a fourth day in a row, Clinton sought to capitalize on Obama's rhetorical stumble.

"I believe that people don't cling to religion -- they value their faith. You don't cling to guns -- you enjoy hunting or collecting or sport shooting," said Clinton, who addressed the Pittsburgh steelworkers just hours after Obama's visit.

"I don't think he really gets it that people are looking for a president who stands up for you and not looks down on you."

But even as Obama tried to make amends, he blasted Clinton and McCain for accepting donations from corporate lobbyists whose power in Washington drowns out concerns of ordinary voters.

"When I hear my opponents, both of whom have spent decades in Washington, saying I'm out of touch, it's time to cut through their rhetoric and look at the reality," he said.

Obama, a Harvard-educated lawyer, mocked efforts by the Yale-educated Clinton to capitalize on his campaign blunder by portraying herself as a middle-American populist.

The Illinois senator alluded to a weekend campaign event the former first lady held at an Indiana pub, where she drank a shot of whiskey and chased it with a swig of beer.

"Around election time, the candidates can't do enough for you," Obama said. "They'll promise you anything, give you a long list of proposals and even come around, with TV crews in tow, to throw back a shot and a beer."

Throughout their campaigns in Pennsylvania, both Obama and Clinton have revived criticisms of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In Pittsburgh, Clinton bemoaned the existence of trade barriers that she said make it difficult for U.S. companies to sell their goods in Canada despite NAFTA.

"I have dairy farmers and apple farmers and small businesses [in New York] who can't get across the border ... while people coming from Canada can sure get into our market," she said.

As president, "I'm going to end that," Clinton said.

While Clinton did not cite particular barriers to the Canadian market, she vowed to end a provision in NAFTA that allows foreign companies to sue the U.S. over its labour, environmental and health and safety rules.

"What I will do is to tell our neighbours, Canada and Mexico, that we have to renegotiate NAFTA or we will pull out of NAFTA."

Former rival endorses 'extraordinary' Obama

By David Usborne in New York
Saturday, 22 March 2008

Barack Obama received a significant boost in his hunt for the Democratic presidential nomination yesterday with a formal endorsement from Bill Richardson, who bowed out of the race in January.

The announcement by Mr Richardson came on a day when Mr Obama's campaign was distracted by revelations of breaches of his confidential passport files at the State Department.

Later yesterday, evidence emerged that the files of Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama's rival, and John McCain, the Republican nominee, had also been accessed without authorisation.

For Senator Clinton, who lags behind the Illinois senator in the race for delegate and superdelegate numbers ahead of the party's convention in June, the move by the Governor of New Mexico is a hard blow. It represented a stunning switch of loyalty as he previously served in her husband's White House as a UN ambassador and as the energy secretary.

Mr Richardson, who some see as a possible running mate in November, is Hispanic and could bolster Mr Obama's support among latin voters, with whom he has so far been at a disadvantage. His siding with Mr Obama may encourage other still-uncommitted superdelegates to follow him. Because primary voting has been so close, it is the superdelegates who are likely to decide the race.

"I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America's moral leadership in the world," Mr Richardson said before appearing alongside Mr Obama at a rally yesterday in Portland, Oregon.

Mr Richardson made clear he had been swayed partly by the speech on race relations delivered on Monday by Mr Obama. "Earlier this week, an extraordinary American made an historic speech," he told the loudly cheering crowd. "As a Hispanic American, I was particularly touched."

A formal investigation was opened yesterday into how three employees at the State Department on three occasions – most recently a week ago – improperly accessed the passport files of Mr Obama. The inquiry was announced by the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. "I told him that I was sorry, and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned somebody had looked into my passport," she told reporters. "We are very concerned about this."

Officials said that two of the three workers involved had been sacked and the other disciplined. The furore yesterday evoked memories of a similar breach of Bill Clinton's passport files when he was running for the White House in 1992. That led to a three-year investigation that ended with no criminal charges being filed.

State Department officials said that the passport files of Mrs Clinton and Senator McCain had also been breached. The Clinton file was opened in the summer by a trainee. The breach of the McCain files was committed, however, by one of three disciplined in the Obama case.

However, Mrs Clinton's campaign team was more concerned that Mr Richardson's move does not trigger a broader flight of superdelegates – including the former candidate John Edwards and also Al Gore – to Mr Obama's camp.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/former-rival-endorses-extraordinary-obama-799315.html

Obama Speech: 'A More Perfect Union'

The Origin of Obama's Pastor Problem

Long before the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright became instant hits on YouTube and talk-show fodder for the cable news channels, Barack Obama knew he had a preacher problem. On the eve of launching his campaign for the White House in February 2007, Obama abruptly withdrew an invitation to Wright to deliver the invocation at his announcement speech in Springfield, Ill. Wright had been Obama's pastor for nearly 20 years. He had brought Obama into the church, helped him find his faith in God, officiated at Obama's wedding and baptized both his children. But Wright had also said a lot of incendiary things from his pulpit about America over the years, things that would be awkward to explain away for a politician hoping to unite the country and become the first African-American President of the United States.

For a year, Obama didn't have to explain his relationship with Wright; he didn't even have to deliver a speech outlining his views on race relations. After all, one of the animating forces behind Obama's campaign was the notion that he, and we, had somehow transcended the old racial divisions in America, that he wasn't "the black candidate" for President but a presidential candidate whose race was only part of his much broader appeal. Then on March 13, video clips emerged of Wright in earlier sermons, shouting "God damn America!" and calling 9/11 a case of "America's chickens ... coming home to roost." It became a story that threatened to capsize Obama's front-running campaign with the speed of a Wall Street bankruptcy. Obama issued a statement denouncing Wright's comments but soon realized he had to do more. And so he ordered his staff to make arrangements for him to give the speech — the speech he'd been turning over in his mind for much of his adult life. "There wasn't a discussion," says spokesman Robert Gibbs. "He made a decision." Obama went home to Chicago that night, and after his wife and two daughters were asleep, he started composing.

The speech he delivered at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia was an artfully reasoned treatise on race and rancor in America, the most memorable speech delivered by any candidate in this campaign and one that has earned Obama comparisons to Lincoln, Kennedy and King. But that doesn't mean it will succeed in its more prosaic mission of appealing to voters who have their doubts about Obama and his preacher. It left unanswered a crucial question: What attracted Obama to Wright in the first place?

The Preacher and the Pol
When Obama joined Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988, the Afrocentric church and its pastor held particular appeal to a 27-year-old son of an African father he barely knew and a white mother from Kansas. Obama was searching for an identity and a community, and he found both at Trinity. And he found a spiritual guide in Wright.

Much of white America is unfamiliar with the milieu of the black church. When clips from Wright's sermons began circulating, many whites heard divisive, angry, unpatriotic pronouncements on race, class and country. Many blacks, on the other hand, heard something more familiar: righteous anger about oppression and deliberate hyperbole in laying blame, which are common in sermons delivered in black churches every Sunday. The Rev. Terri Owens, dean of students at the University of Chicago Divinity School, says the black church tradition has its roots in the era of slavery, when African Americans held services under trees, far from their white masters. "Churches have always been the place where black people could speak freely," she says. "They were the only institutions they could own and run by themselves."

In his books, Obama says he might not have become a Christian — his mother was a skeptical secularist and his absent father an atheist — if not for the special character of the black church. "Out of necessity, the black church had to minister to the whole person. Out of necessity, the black church rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation," he writes in The Audacity of Hope. It also matched his intellectual curiosity. "Perhaps it was out of this ... grounding of faith in struggle that the historically black church offered me a second insight: that faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts."

That desire for a more challenging faith helps explain the appeal of Trinity, despite its potential for controversy. The church, which has ministered to poor South Side families and Oprah Winfrey alike, isn't fringe, but neither is it a likely home for someone plotting a political career in Chicago. "If you're black and you're trying to get ahead in politics, you're not going to join Trinity," says Dwight Hopkins, a Trinity member who is also a professor at U. of C.'s Divinity School. "Not because it's radical — it isn't radical in its context. But it would be safer to join a North Side ecumenical church — the sort of place where people are quiet. They stand up, sit down, listen and leave."

As Obama's political career blossomed, he could have quietly left Trinity for one of those more staid black churches, but he chose to stay. In his speech, he said he disagreed with Wright strongly, and yet he didn't leave the church (or even criticize his pastor until Wright's sermons became a campaign issue). He didn't explain why he stayed, but by trying to show black and white resentment as the backdrop for Wright's comments, Obama suggested that his response to controversy isn't to walk out of the room but to try to understand what's fueling the fire. He also drew a distinction between political advice and spiritual guidance, arguing that many Americans know what it's like to disagree with something their pastor or priest or rabbi says.

By asking voters to understand the context of Wright's anger, though, Obama is counting on voters to accept nuance in an arena that almost always rewards simplicity over complexity. Politicians tend to offer deliberately banal choices: Either we move forward or we fall backward, either we let the economy falter or we help it grow, either we succumb to our enemies or we defeat them — the choice is up to you, America! Obama's formulation was different. Explicitly asking Americans to grapple with racial divisions and then transcend them — that's a bolder, riskier request.

After he delivered his speech, Obama found his wife Michelle backstage. She was weeping. He shared a quiet, emotional moment with her. Then Obama was all business again. "What's next?" he asked, as if anyone knew the answer.

With reporting by Jay Newton-Small/Washington And Lori Reese/Chicago

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