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CHICAGO — Visitors to the opening weekend of the Barack Obama Presidential Center hailed the 44th president’s legacy as an example of inclusiveness, without the “Black Beauty” scandals, while lamenting what they see as a dark turn in the US under President Donald Trump.
“The community is great, we’re glad you’re here,” Lauren Tillman, who lives about 40 minutes outside of Chicago, told Fox News Digital. “We needed something like this. Chicago looks like a place for some people who aren’t from the area… so I think this brought everyone together, like, ‘oh there’s something community,’ for Black people, and Juneteenth, so I thought that was great, too.”
The presidential center’s opening weekend kicked off with a star-studded private event and concert Thursday night, and the 19.3-acre campus opened to the public Friday during Juneteenth, which commemorates the day Black slaves were declared free in 1865.
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The Obama Presidential Center building is shown with a glass facade and surrounding trees. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
“Just knowing that Chicago doesn’t always get the best representative, knowing that there was a black president who came from this place, and it’s nice to remember his history,” said Ashley Woods, who joined Tillman during the inauguration.
“You know that [Obama] I was going to try to do something for his people, that means a lot to me and being here means a lot,” Tillman added.
“And I think, to offset that, I think the legacy is Black people doing well,” Woods continued. “Also, growing up in a place like Chicago, you don’t really think you can do much without being a rapper or, you know, going to sports, but to see somebody who’s been successful at the top, they’re able to run a nation, there was a scandal around him and his family, like it shows you that we can be more than what America tells us we can be.”
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Lauren Tillman and Ashley Woods spoke to Fox News Digital at the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Friday. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
Sheryl Rogers and Peggy Neely-Harris made the trip from St. Louis for weekend festivities.
“What it means for African Americans [is] to come together, to count, a reminder of the beauty that is within each of us, especially for African Americans and especially in this time when our existence is under attack,” Rogers told Fox News Digital.
Neely-Harris agreed, and said the brand new presidential center is a symbol of hope and renewal, and that the center is “a light in this present darkness.”
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Sheryl Rogers and Peggy Neely Harris spoke to Fox News Digital during the opening weekend of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Friday. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
“[Obama] left a great example of how you should live, what kind of character you should have and the love of family and community,” Rogers continued. “You can see the love just come out of them, and I love to see love in action.”
“There’s no shame,” he added.
However, Obama faced major scandals and controversies during his two terms in the White House.
Obama’s DOJ illegally seized Fox News phone records, including a phone number belonging to a reporter’s parents.
The seizure was authorized after a judge issued a subpoena, and in the affidavit seeking the warrant, an FBI agent called journalist James Rosen an “accomplice” to a crime that may have violated the Espionage Act.
Obama also faced claims of government arms embargo when his IRS accused him of slowly reducing tax-exempt approvals for grassroots conservative groups that were determined to oppose his agenda.
Groups with words like “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names were allegedly prevented from forming for months and years.
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Barack Obama speaks during the dedication of the Barack Obama Presidential Center, Thursday, in Chicago. (Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images)
Operation Fast and Furious was another chart-topping Obama scandal.
ATF agents knowingly allowed illegal grassroots purchases of weapons near the southern US-Mexico border, hoping that tracking the guns would lead directly to high-ranking cartel kingpins. But the Obama-era agency failed to monitor at least 2,000 weapons, which actually ended up in the hands of dangerous actors.
One of the weapons in the arsenal was used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010.
When, in 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder was subpoenaed during a House Oversight Committee investigation into the matter, he refused to comply, allowing the committee to see thousands of pages of records related to the job. He later became the first US cabinet official to be held in contempt of Congress, but the Obama DOJ failed to prosecute him.
Obama has ordered the execution of four Americans held by terrorists in Yemen without due process.
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Valerie Reynolds speaks with Fox News Digital on the opening weekend of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Friday. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
Valerie Reynolds, a 26-year-old Chicago resident, told Fox News Digital that she thinks the center will improve the image of the city’s South Side, which often finds itself in the news for violence and poverty.
“I think Barack Obama’s legacy is an inspiration and will continue to be an inspiration for coming together, for the power of what can be done and what can be created when we all come together,” he said. “It’s something we lack today. I saw the division in this country in a way I’ve never seen, and I was reminded how big these groups are here today, because I feel this closeness for the first time since he ran for election in 2008.”
Kia Ware, a woman from Virginia, said the opening of the center is a sad reminder of where America has been heading since Obama left office.
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Kia Ware speaks with Fox News Digital during the opening weekend of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Friday. (Peter D’Abrosca/Fox News Digital)
“It hurts me because I was proud of everything that was accomplished with that legacy in terms of, you know, fighting for vulnerable people and vulnerable areas and the protection of many things that are now being erased forever, and I feel like it’s setting us back,” she said.
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Ware added that Obama is still the leader of the Democratic Party, and said that people who believe in his history want him to “go back.”
“I think it means that, like me, I feel very grateful that we have those eight years of history for putting women first, and putting minorities first,” she said. “I felt like that unity, just seeing all the people of different backgrounds and ages and generations here, I get that same feeling.”
