Obama, the son of a black Muslim Kenyan father and a white American mother, used two Bibles—the ones owned by Abraham Lincoln and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr—for the swearing-in. This was symbolic of the struggle for equality in America, beginning with Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves 150 years ago, to King’s civil rights movement, which reached a crescendo with his famous “I have a dream” speech delivered here 50 years ago, and ultimately to Obama becoming the first black president. A scenario long deemed unlikely given the wounds left by 487 years of African American history. No wonder Obama is aware of the burden US race relations history has placed on him. He said in his inaugural address, “What binds this nation together is not the colours of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional, what makes us America is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”