Robert Barker/University Photography

Professor James Turner watches the inauguration of Barack Obama.

History was evoked in all its complexity on campus on the day Barack Obama made history in Washington, D.C.

Inequality and slavery, the civil rights movement, remembering those who fought for social justice, the dream of Martin Luther King Jr., and the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy were all brought up in comments at the Africana Studies and Research Center on Jan. 20.

The center marked the occasion of the swearing-in of Obama as the 44th president of the United States with a live viewing on a large screen of the inauguration ceremony, and commentary from scholars. More than 100 people filled the center's Multipurpose Room for the event, with participants addressing the occasion's personal and historical significance.

"I know what this day means to me -- that part of us will be in the White House," said Eric Acree, Africana librarian, in his opening remarks. Acree was impressed that Obama values libraries and the work of librarians, and that he stands for "making sure that our access to free thought was protected."

Africana Center director Salah Hassan said Obama is "part of a social political progressive movement, not just the product of an accidental history."

"Why Obama? We have black people in other leading roles, such as Condoleezza Rice," the former U.S. secretary of state, he said. "But with Obama, it is about a black person who is also a progressive. And that social movement needs to keep progressing."

"This whole election has been a commentary on the whole of racial inequality," said Professor Robert Harris. He noted that the inauguration site and much of Washington, D.C., was built by slave labor, and that plans for the capital city were drawn by a free African-American surveyor and mathematician, Benjamin Banneker.

Harris also enumerated various milestones in the struggle for equality, from the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II to the 1954 "Little Rock Nine," who were invited by the Inaugural Committee to witness the ceremony in Washington. He quoted the Rev. Jesse Jackson: "Barack Obama has run the last lap of a 54-year race for civil rights."

Historian Judith Byfield said her 88-year-old father, who saw Obama's potential at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, worked tirelessly for the candidate's campaign last year.

Professor and former Africana Center director James Turner called Obama's inauguration speech "an intellectual treatise, in ways that we have not been used to hearing in the past eight years; a catalog of the difficulty that we are now facing. He was graceful but subtle in his treatment of the previous administration."

Turner also reflected on youth movements of the 1960s and mentioned the "tremendous burden" -- including war and the economy -- facing the new president, and described the effect of Obama's achievement in attaining the office.

"We are the last generation who can say that we never thought we would see this in our lifetime," Turner said. "This new generation, those born after 1995, they're growing up with this as a fact. Their landscape is altered."