South Side Unveils Lifesize Barack Obama Statue

By TruthLine Reports

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE UNVEILS LIFESIZE STATUE OF BARACK OBAMA – “THE KID FROM THE BLOCK WHO TOOK US TO THE WHITE HOUSE”

CHICAGO, 6 DECEMBER 2025

Under a crisp winter sun on the corner of 63rd & Cottage Grove, the South Side just wrote a new chapter in bronze.

A 2.5-meter statue of Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, was unveiled today in the first-ever monument of him on the very streets that raised him. The figure stands relaxed yet resolute: one hand in his pocket, the other holding a worn basketball, eyes looking down the block like he’s still watching out for the neighborhood.

No motorcade, no Secret Service perimeter. Just a South Side block party: Second Line brass band, folding chairs on the sidewalk, and a thousand neighbors who knew him when he was just “Barry.”

Obama, 64, grinning in jeans and a Bulls cap, stepped to the microphone with that familiar half-smile:

“I didn’t grow up with marble statues or marble floors. I grew up right here, with cracked sidewalks and dreams bigger than these buildings. This statue ain’t for me, it’s for every kid walking past it thinking, ‘If that skinny boy with the funny name could make it, maybe I can too.’”

Raised in a tiny apartment on the South Side, community-organizer-turned-law-professor-turned-President, Obama returned today to the same streets that taught him hope is stubborn. The statue, cast by Chicago artist Preston Jackson from recycled South Side steel, now stands across from the barbershop where he once got his first fade and the basketball court where he learned to talk trash in three languages.

Local grandma Miss Lorraine, 87, who used to babysit young Barry, wiped tears and laughed:

“He still owes me five dollars from 1979. Told him I’d wait right here till he paid up. Guess I won.”

As the brass band struck up “Sweet Home Chicago,” Obama cut the ribbon, then did what nobody expected: he picked up the mic one more time and led the whole block in a call-and-response:

“Fired up?”

“Ready to go!” the crowd roared back, just like 2008.

From 63rd & Cottage Grove to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and back again, Barack Obama just reminded America:

Real power doesn’t come from Washington.

It comes from home.

And today, home welcomed its favorite son back, in bronze, forever.