{"id":804840,"date":"2026-10-16T20:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T20:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/804840\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T20:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T20:34:10","slug":"barack-obama-pays-tribute-to-manchester-cotton-workers-and-cites-them-as-an-inspiration-barack-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/804840\/","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama pays tribute to Manchester cotton workers and cites them as an inspiration | Barack Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama cited the \u201cwonderful\u201d story of how Manchester cotton workers stood in solidarity<\/a> with enslaved African Americans as an inspiration for our times in a live appearance in the city.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of people packed Co-op Live in the city on Thursday for An Evening With Barack Obama<\/a>, where the former US president was interviewed by the writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch.<\/p>\n

Obama closed the 90-minute event, punctuated by cheers, whoops, laughter and applause from the audience, by discussing the work of the Obama Presidential Center, a museum, library and education project in Chicago, and that of his foundation \u2013 committed to challenging economic inequality, the climate crisis, education and health, with programmes for women and girls, global emerging leaders, and journalists in oppressive regimes.<\/p>\n

He spoke of the hope he took from the younger people he worked with, and from the Lancashire cotton famine, in which workers from Manchester<\/a> and surrounding towns supported Abraham Lincoln\u2019s blockade of cotton from enslaving Confederate states.<\/p>\n

Obama said the centre was about reminding people what was possible. \u201cI was reminded being here at Manchester of just this wonderful story of the cotton workers here at Manchester. During the American civil war in 1862 at a time when their livelihoods depended on cotton and the union had set up a barricade and prevented cotton from leaving the South as part of the civil war effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yeah, the business people and manufacturers, and I think even the Guardian editorialised \u2018don\u2019t mess with that, you know, this is our lifeblood\u2019 and over at the Free Trade Hall, a bunch of British working workers who are hungry and not sure whether they\u2019re gonna be able to hold things together, sit there and they meet, and they collectively say, we are going to stand with those who are fighting for freedom, even if it\u2019s going to cost us.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so you hear a story like that. And they write a letter to Lincoln and he writes back. And commends them for a historic expression of Christian humility and charity, and grace. And so you then say to yourself, if they could do it, why can\u2019t we?<\/p>\n

Obama in Manchester. Photograph: Chris Osuh\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no guarantee that they were gonna benefit in any way from it, but somehow, their life was better for that. Even in the midst of hardship. And I think if we could tell each other those stories, and pass those to our children and are our grandchildren. We\u2019ll get through these times too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Guardian\u2019s Cotton Capital series launched in 2023 to explore its founders\u2019 links to the cotton trade and transatlantic enslavement, including how the newspaper covered the subject<\/a> at the time.<\/p>\n

Hirsch spoke of the huge impact Obama\u2019s 2008 A More Perfect Union speech had had, including for her as a \u201ca black British person of mixed heritage\u201d.<\/p>\n

Asked to share the ways his identity is reflected in his politics and leadership, Obama said it did so in ways \u201cparticular to the United States\u201d, and ways that were \u201cmore universal\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Starting with the Guardian\u2019s own history, Guardian journalists explore the legacies of enslavement and reparative justice around the world<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cRace is this faultline of so much of American history \u2026 our union made a series of compromises, including, essentially, tacitly ratifying slavery, and a civil war was fought and enormous struggle to secure a more inclusive notion who we the people are.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd for whatever variety of reasons, I became, I think, a symbol of that journey that our country took. Not to get to a post-racial America, that was never possible, but I do think it marks the point in time in which the idea that \u2018we the people\u2019 means all people and not just some, seemed to have been validated for at least a moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt marked a promise, and I was mindful of that. It did not erase the institutional, structural legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. But it did signify that the country changed, that the change was possible. Namely, through efforts of sacrifice of countless people, many of them nameless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama described democracy as a \u201cjourney\u201d, that required \u201ccontinual replenishment\u201d to avoid falling back into \u201cold ways\u201d, amid great economic, social and technological disruptions, saying \u201cwe tend to forget how recently democracy has taken hold and how fragile it is \u2026 For most of human history for millennia, societies were organised around caste and hierarchy, violence and force.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statesman said it was a \u201cgood thing\u201d for the prime minister and former Greater Manchester<\/a> mayor, Andy Burnham, to \u201chave [the Ukrainian president] Zelenskyy here and remind people what\u2019s at stake\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barack Obama cited the \u201cwonderful\u201d story of how Manchester cotton workers stood in solidarity with enslaved African Americans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-804840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}