There are places designed for ordinary use — and then there are places designed for a particular kind of moment. The National Mall is the latter. Standing inside two million people on a January morning, feeling the temperature of the crowd change when the oath was taken, I understood for the first time what the space had been built for.
The National Mall runs nearly two miles from the steps of the Capitol to the base of the Lincoln Memorial — wider than a Parisian boulevard, flanked by museums and monuments that constitute the country’s argument about itself. On most days it is traversed by tourists and school groups and joggers using it as a shortcut through the federal geometry. But it was designed for assembly. For the expression of national will, made physical.
On January 20, 2009, it held two million people. I was among them.
The trip had begun the day before, on what President-elect Obama had designated as a National Day of Service — Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 19. Through the generosity of a dear friend with close ties to the Presidential Detail, my mother, my aunt, and I had been placed at a volunteer event at Coolidge High School, where we worked with students on letters of thanks to the troops overseas.
What happened next is still difficult to fully describe. The President-elect came around to meet each of us personally. Then so did Michelle.
I will say this about them both: they did not perform. Barack moved through the room with the kind of calm that doesn’t come from suppressing energy but from having resolved something internally. He spoke about being part of creating change — not waiting for it, not lamenting what was wrong, but making things right. He was personable in a way that felt completely unguarded. The word that kept returning to me was genuine.
Michelle’s presence was entirely different and equally complete. Her gaze was direct in a way that made small talk feel beside the point. She spoke about commitment — to work, to family, to being a contributor to the world in each role you hold. A call to action. In a few minutes, she said the kind of thing that takes years to absorb.
The photograph from that afternoon — of the President-elect teasing a student about his sunglasses, framing him for an imaginary photoshoot — was later published in the New York Times book Obama: The Historic Journey. My mother and I were working beside them in the frame.
The next morning, we were escorted through the crowd to the Mall, positioned with a direct view of the Capitol. I have honestly never been so cold. It had been 70 degrees in Sacramento before I left; the Washington wind was something else entirely — the kind that enters through wool and settles into your face. My toes ached. My nose ran. None of it mattered.
Two million people have a particular quality of stillness when they are all listening to the same thing. The crowd around us kept returning to a phrase that moved through it like a current: we’re all family today. A woman nearby — a local — said it was the first time in years she had felt the city fill with positive energy rather than opposition. I believed her.
Even the mass exodus afterward — the gridlock of bodies slowly working its way toward the metro, toward Georgetown on foot, through the long ebb of a city remade for the day — carried that same quality of calm. No one was arrested. No one was angry. People reached through the press of bodies to help strangers.
The ball that evening was the Neighborhood Ball — the first the President and First Lady attended. Beyoncé sang At Last for their first dance. The rest of the evening’s celebrity performers became secondary to the fact of the evening itself. The long day closed in a room full of people who had stood together in the cold and were not yet ready to stop feeling what they’d felt.
The National Mall is among the most deliberate works of civic design in the country — a two-mile axis built for the expression of public will. For a deeper look at the architecture of Washington’s public spaces, explore The National Mall: Reading the Axis →
For a deeper orientation to Washington DC, explore Washington DC in the Atlas →