As a young child, Barack Obama learned about the civil rights movement from his mother. Obama's mother strove to instill in her multiracial son pride in being more than just literally African American. There is much to learn from Obama's history, understood both as the story of his life and as what Obama himself has said about his past and the larger history of race in the United States. For the past two years, the author has had the opportunity to explore the pedagogical possibilities of Obama's history with fifteen college freshmen in a seminar entitled "Barack Obama and the History of Race in America." He has found that teaching Obama's history can help students understand how the traditional narrative of the civil rights movement can be expanded both geographically and temporally. In this article, the author discusses the importance of viewing the past through the lens of Obama's history and how it empowers students to examine how their own lives have been influenced by and could contribute to the many legacies of the long civil rights movement. (Contains 19 notes.)