In a passage from Barack Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father (written in 1995), he describes his visit to a barbershop in Chicago shortly after moving there. The city's first black mayor, Harold Washington, had recently been elected, and the barber tried to describe the feeling that swept through the city's black population:
Smitty said, "The night Harold won, let me tell you, people just ran the streets. It was like the day Joe Louis knocked out Schmeling. Same feeling. People weren't just proud of Harold. They were proud of themselves. I stayed inside, but my wife and I, we couldn't get to bed until three, we were so excited. When I woke up the next morning, it seemed like the most beautiful day of my life."
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