President Obama started in public life not as an elected official but as a community organizer. He worked with churches and other groups on the south side of Chicago to push public leaders to fight poverty, improve the local school system and make housing more affordable, and to bring about the change the community needed and deserved.
I was born October 5, 1957, on the South Side of Chicago, in the Woodlawn area, a neighborhood that hasn't changed much in forty-five years. Our house was on 66th and Blackstone, but the city tore it down when the rats took over.
I became the storyteller of South Side Chicago. I used an old Kiwi liquid shoe polish as a microphone. I'd go around the house interviewing everybody, telling stupid jokes, doing voices. I mimicked Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., people on 'Laugh-In,' Flip Wilson.
I'm from the south side of Nigeria, a place called Port Harcourt City... No one ever makes it out of there. I wanted to put it on the map.
Coming from the south side of Atlanta, Georgia, everyone has a chip on their shoulder. That's how competitive it is. It makes athletes great who come from there.
I came from the South Side of Chicago wanting to be a rap artist and make videos.
I would love to play the President of the United States. I have been told we resemble each other, and it would be a challenge I would be up for. Obama is from the south side of Chitown, and so am I... I'm just saying, but be on the lookout.
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, north Beverly. It was cool, everybody's cool on the block.
I grew up on the south side of Chicago, most of that time on welfare. My mother and sister and I used to live with my grandparents and various cousins. We shared a two-bedroom tenement, and the three of us slept in one of those bedrooms and had a set of bunk beds.
Mom came from what has been called the poorest place in America - Lake Providence, Louisiana. She was born on the south side of the Mississippi which was mainly African American and even poorer than the rest.
