“Yet some of Obama’s peers...find it puzzling that despite Obama’s openly progressive views on social issues, he has also won support from staunch conservatives,” the piece read. “Ironically, he has come under the most criticism from fellow black students for being too conciliatory toward conservatives and not choosing more blacks to other top positions on the law review.”

The article quoted Christine Lee, a black second-year HLS student at the time: “He’s willing to talk to them [the conservatives] and he has a grasp of where they are coming from, which is something a lot of blacks don’t have and don’t care to have.”

Even as president of the Law Review, Obama was a talented politician. In the same article, Obama’s constitutional law professor, Laurence H. Tribe ’62, was quoted: “He’s very unusual, in the sense that other students who might have something approximating his degree of insight are very intimidating to other students or inconsiderate and thoughtless....He’s able to build upon what other students say and see what’s valuable in their comments without belittling them.”

He turned down opportunities to clerk for the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D. C. circuit to work in civil rights law back in Chicago.

Wilkins, who remembers Obama as “a super star” even back in his law school days, said it was “very clear even in his student days that Obama’s first love was politics at the grassroots level.”

Wilkins recalls talking with Obama when he was a third-year about clerkships in the Supreme Court.

“I encouraged him to apply because I knew he’d get one, and he said he wasn’t interested, that he wanted to go back to Illinois and get involved in politics instead,” Wilkins said.

“He’s the kind of person that has always known what he wanted,” he added. “He really knows how to get things done.”

Bloomberg Professor of Law Martha L. Minow, who taught Obama during his time at the Law School, recalls that he always had his mind set on the community, not on the Supreme Court.

“He was very clear that he wanted to return to the issues he had handled as a community organizer in Chicago,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Minow recently worked with Obama on a two-year project run out of the Kennedy School of Government that produced a report called “Better Together,” which examined and identified efforts to strengthen bonds within communities and democracies.

“Barack impressed every participant” working on the project, Minow wrote, “and indeed, we all pledged to support his campaign for President of the United States.”

“He tried it laugh it off,” she added, “but we were serious—and rightly so.”

Wilkins also remembers that Obama’s talents as a speaker developed early on.

“I remember listening to him,” Wilkins said, “when we were both speaking at some event for the Black Law Students Association. His speech wasn’t quite as good as the one he gave last night, but it was just mesmerizing.”