Just the Facts: Inauguration Firsts

We all know that Barack Obama will be the first African-American to be sworn in as POTUS, but here are some other inaugural firsts that you may not know about:

Presidential Inauguration “firsts” (from InfoPlease and the Senate web-site):

- George Washington’s first inaugural address was 135 words in length.
- John Adams was first to receive the oath of office from the Chief Justice of the United States
- Thomas Jefferson's inauguration was the first held in Washington, D.C.
- James Monroe was the first President to take the oath of office and deliver the Inaugural address outdoors; ceremony took place on platform in front of the temporary Brick Capitol (where Supreme Court now stands).
- John Tyler was the first Vice President to assume Presidency upon the death of the President.
- Abraham Lincoln was the first to include African-Americans in his parade.
- William Taft's wife was the first one to accompany her husband in the procession from the Capitol to the White House.
- Women were included for the first time in Woodrow Wilson's second inaugural parade.
- Calvin Coolidge's was the first inaugural address broadcast on the radio.
- Warren G. Harding was the first President to ride to and from his inauguration in an automobile.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first President Inaugurated on January 20th, a change made by the 20th Amendment to the Constitution; first time the Vice President was Inaugurated outdoors on the same platform with the President.
- Harry Truman's inauguration was the first to be televised.
- Lyndon Johnson was the first (and so far) only president to be sworn in by a woman, U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes.
- Gerald R. Ford was the first unelected Vice President to become President
- Jimmy Carter's inaugural parade featured solar heat for the reviewing stand and handicap-accessible viewing.
- The first ceremony broadcast on the Internet was Bill Clinton's second inauguration.

Will Obama Get Us to Step Up Our Game?

The stakes for President-Elect Obama's stay at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. are exceptionally high, as are the expectations of this nation. We are in the crossroads. On the one hand, we are are in dire economic straits, embroiled in wars that challenge us, and have an environmental crisis that demands our full attention; on the other hand, we have seen history made and have the leadership and opportunity to build a legacy that lives up to promise of a free people.

It is fitting irony that Barack Obama will begin his job the day after fallen Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King's life is celebrated. To say that Obama is standing on the shoulders of a giant is not crediting either his own accomplishments or ours as a nation. And, without Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, there could not have been a President Obama. Nor without Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson could we shed our oppressive past.

But there is much to do and very little time to reflect on our past. The Inauguration is heralded as historic, and rightly so. However, it is historic not only because of what has happened before, but because it marks what will be and what must come next.

And what will come? Congress has got to act decisively to pass legislation that helps people back to work, to keep their homes, to take care of their kids, and to improve the global environment. It must work with President Obama to roll back the damage done from the excesses of both the Clinton and Bush eras. The petty nature of politics has to be challenged to produce results.

And then, will we as Americans and world citizen's also do our part. Will we forego our lesser needs to address those huge needs that loom ahead? Will we move past our consumer-based view of government and participate in our democracy by fixing those things that government can't and supporting those things that government can?

We can not expect that any one person can make things better for the rest of us, if we don't join the march. If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that it wasn't the time that King spent in the Birmhingham jail that made the change to civil rights or the march on Selma, it was Rosa Parks, the Freedom Riders, and the good acts by millions of nameless people that were inspired by King that caused the walls to tumble down. Now come the time to build up.