Barack Obama and Michelle Obama
Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
Marker Inscription
"On our first date, I treated her to the finest ice cream Baskin-Robbins had to offer, our dinner table doubling as the curb. I kissed her, and it tasted like chocolate". On this site President Barack Obama first kissed Michelle Obama.
The Story
On this Chicago spot, a young Barack Obama shared a first kiss with Michelle Robinson after a date that ended with Baskin-Robbins ice cream and a seat on the curb. Years later, as President, he recalled the moment fondly, and it was memorialized where their courtship began. The site marks the private beginning of a partnership that reached the White House.
Why it matters
It commemorates the personal origins of Barack and Michelle Obama, the first African American First Couple, whose journey became part of the larger American story.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Barack Obama
- · Michelle Obama
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
1919 Race Riot Plaque
Chicago, IL
This plaque marks the origin of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, which erupted after a Black teenager rafting on Lake Michigan drifted across an unspoken racial boundary at a segregated beach and was struck by rocks and drowned. The violence that followed left dozens dead and hundreds injured over nearly a week, part of the nationwide 'Red Summer' of racial unrest. The Martin Luther King Jr. quotation frames the tragedy within the longer struggle for racial justice.
Undergoroud Railroad Memorial
South Holland, IL
This memorial honors Jan Ton and his wife Aagje, Dutch immigrants who farmed near the Little Calumet River and helped found the area's First Reformed Church and Dutch settlements. Their farm became a station on the Underground Railroad, sheltering freedom seekers escaping slavery on their way toward Canada. Faith and conscience led this immigrant community to risk much for others' liberty.
Underground Railroad Memorial
Maywood, IL
In the decades before the Civil War, enslaved people escaping the South followed the secret network of routes and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad toward freedom in the North. This memorial recalls a "Ten Mile Freedom House" that once stood here, offering shelter to those making the dangerous journey. The site ties the Chicago area into that clandestine web of resistance.
Underground Railroad Site
Lisbon, IL
Founded in 1835-36 by abolitionists who had migrated west from Oneida County, New York, the Lisbon Colony carried the fervor of the burning-over district's reform movements onto the Illinois prairie. These settlers made their community an active center of the anti-slavery cause, part of the network of sympathizers who resisted slavery in the decades before the Civil War.