5-year-old from iconic 'Hair Like Mine' photo with Obama is going to University of Memphis
The Oval Office was very big, and that was intimidating. But it was where his dad's boss worked.
Jacob Philadelphia, age 5, walked in and remembers feeling a little shy.
His older brother was asking then-President Barack Obama questions about weapons systems and the budget process. Jacob stood and looked at his dad's boss for a moment and asked a question of his own.
"Is your hair like mine?" the future University of Memphis Tiger asked.
The president leaned over for Jacob to feel for himself, a moment captured in an image known as one of the most iconic of Obama's presidency. It depicts the kind of representative impact the president hoped he could have for other Black people who'd never seen a Black person as America's top leader.
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Jacob isn't 5 years old anymore, and is instead a high school graduate this month. He plans to attend the University of Memphis in the fall, where he'll study political science.
Jacob and Obama caught up in a video published by the former president to social media Friday morning, reminiscing over the moment from more than a decade ago and looking toward Jacob's own future.
"I think the White House visit clearly inspired you, I hope," Obama said.
Jacob Philadelphia was five years old when he visited the Oval Office and asked if his hair was like mine. That photo became one of our favorites – a reminder of the power of seeing yourself in your leaders.
Today, he's graduating from high school! Check out our recent reunion. pic.twitter.com/gB39hFS3Wp— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 27, 2022
That day, May 8, 2009, Jacob was at the White House with his older brother and his mom and dad, Carlton Philadelphia, a Marine who had served on the National Security Council. Jacob didn't realize at the time, he said, how powerful the man was who folded over toward him so he could reach his head and feel hair like his own.
"That was a pretty big highlight of my life," Jacob recalled in the video Friday. "It is very wonderful to see representation in the government because if I get to see another Black man be at the top, be at that pinnacle, then I want to follow that lead."
He and Obama talked via video conference so the former president could congratulate him on his success. Jacob went to high school in Uganda, he said, a product of the travels his family has had since his dad started working for the U.S. Department of State.
Attending school in Memphis, Jacob will be in a county where two-thirds of voters, or 250,000, supported Obama in 2008, and nearly as many cast votes to re-elect him in 2012.
It was in the president's first term that he met Jacob and also that he made perhaps his most memorable trip to Memphis. In 2011, Obama was the graduation speaker at Booker T. Washington High School in South Memphis, which won the 2011 Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge. His introduction, by graduate Chris Dean, was seen by thousands online.
"It came at a time when the Grizzlies were in the playoffs, the river was flooding, and no one was paying attention to us…" Dean recalled to The Commercial Appeal in 2017. "But now, the world was turning to us, those of us who were struggling and living in the 38126, after years of turning away from us."
That was two years after Jacob asked the president about his hair.
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For Obama, he said in the Friday video, the photo, taken by White House photographer Pete Souza, "embodied one of the hopes that I'd had when I first started running for office."
It hung in the West Wing for several years of his presidency.
Obama hoped, he said, that if he were to win the election, Black people, other people of color and others who aren't often represented in positions of power could see themselves differently.
"...they could see the world open up for them," Obama remembers hoping.
Jacob's mom, Roseane Philadelphia, recently told Los Angeles Times columnist Jackie Calmes that "Jacob over the years dreamed of being one thing and then another, but 'the only thing' that’s been consistent is his desire to ultimately become president."
“That’s why he’s going to study political science,” she said.
Laura Testino covers education and children's issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901-512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @LDTestino
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Newest Memphis Tiger is child from iconic 'Hair Like Mine' photo with Obama
