Public Space At Obama Center To Be Named For Slain Chicago Teen

CHICAGO — Hadiya Pendleton had a way of making people feel special and always made sure she listened to them in a way that supported them, her mother remembers.

But for the 15-year-old girl from Chicago’s South Side that was part of a majorette team that performed at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, her chance to live out her life’s mission was cut short. Hadiya was shot and killed eight days after the inauguration in 2013, joining the young people whose lives are ended by gun violence every year in Chicago.

The Obama Foundation announced on Friday that a public space named after the young girl will be included at the Obama Presidential Center, which is slated to open in 2025 on the city’s South Side. The winter garden will honor the legacy of Hadiya, who was shot in a park about a mile from the Obama’s Chicago home in the Kenwood neighborhood.

In a video posted to the Obama Foundation website, former First Lady Michelle Obama said she never got to meet Hadiya. But after attending the girl’s funeral along with other public leaders and hundreds of Chicago residents, Michelle Obama says that he reached a place of establishing a connection with the slain teenager.

“I immediately understood the extraordinary power and potential that lay inside of this young woman,” Michelle Obama says in the nearly five-minute video. “(It was) a potential that was stolen from us by the tragedy of gun violence.”

In 2019, 24-year-old Michaeil Ward was sentenced to 84 years in prison after being convicted of killing Hadiya.

In the video, Hadiya’s mother, Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, says that her daughter’s name means “gift from God”. But she said Hadiya’s gift was really found in the way she twirled the baton that put her on the inaugural stage with her fellow majorettes from Bronzeville.

After performing at the ceremonial parade in Washington, Hadiya came back to Chicago and announced that she wanted to pursue a possible career in politics or journalism. But eight days later, she was gone.

Michelle Obama says in the video that she carries Hadiya’s story with her to this day, which made it evident that the former first couple wanted the girl’s story to be present at the Obama Center.

Obama said the garden will be a “dazzling public space” that will be a place to gather and hopefully, Obama said, to see potential that lies in each and every person we connect with.”

In the video, Cowley-Pendleton said her heart melted after learning that the space would be named after her daughter.

“I was at a loss for words because I knew people would be saying her name,” Cowley-Pendleton said. “There’s going to be so much life in the space that will house so many young people and individuals over time and so I believe her legacy will continue to live on, her story will continue to be told.”