By Dan Irwin
CNHI News Service

NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Most viewers would have been hard-pressed to find someone they knew in TV images of the crowd at Tuesday’s inauguration.

Teddye Snell

Millions of stories: President Obama
Despite chaotic, cramped and cold conditions, the American people welcomed change with open arms and minds.

By Teddye Snell
CNHI News Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. – What do you get when you cram almost 2 million people into a 1-mile radius of an already burgeoning city?

President Barack Obama addresses the nation
— and the estimated 2 million people on hand to see
him in Washington, D.C. — on the steps of the
U.S. Capitol moments after taking
the oath of office Tuesday.

By Fredie Carmichael
CNHI News Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As Barack Obama swore the presidential oath of office Tuesday, sunlight broke through soft stray clouds over the south side of the U.S. Capitol and shone directly on the nation’s 44th president and the estimated 2 million chilled spectators determined to witness his historic ceremony.
The roar from a sea of people that stretched as far back as the Lincoln Memorial, despite temperatures in the teens, echoed in waves back to the steps of the Capitol each time Obama's image appeared on massive television screens throughout the National Mall.
The crowd chanted, "O-BA-MA ... O-BA-MA" in the few hours before the first music note was struck to signal the ceremony’s beginning.

Osi Onyekwuluje

Onyekwuluje, like Obama, has African roots, political ambition

By Ronnie Ellis
CNHI News Service

He’s a black man “tickled pink,” a politician with an unusual name, with roots in Africa and Tuesday he stood in the sunny but cold and blustery air surrounding the U.S. Capitol steps.

He’d come for history.