No matter what Obama does in office, for the rest of his life he will be the moral leader of black America.

There is a black Mount Rushmore in the minds of many. It shows, etched in magnificent granite, from left to right: Frederick Douglass, then Marcus Garvey, then Thurgood Marshall, then Malcolm X, then Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But since the 60s no one has taken the place that King had. Jesse tried but never really got there. Farrakhan and Sharpton never got close. Mandela is beloved and inspirational but not American, and no more of a leader here than Kofi Anan. For decades there was no black leader, no person who black America listened to and respected as our moral compass, directing us toward greatness.

Douglass helped us out of slavery, Marshall and X and King led us out of segregation and into the idea of black power, but the challenges today are more subtle and nuanced and complicated and varied in the different classes and ideologies of black people. Many thought that the black community had grown too complex to have a black leader, that the entire idea was antiquated. But now there is a new face on the black Mount Rushmore: Obama.

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