Back in 1990, Barack Obama, then 28, was elected the first black president of Harvard Law Review. In an interview with the New York Times that year, he said he planned to spend up to 3 years working in law and then go into politics or community work.

In 1991, he presented a Black History Minute public service announcement for TBS that year, believed to be his first-ever appearance on US national TV.

In the video, he talked about Charles Hamilton Houston, the black lawyer known for teaching Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The two worked on the landmark court ruling Brown vs Board of Education, which marked the end of colour segregation in public schools:

The distinguished lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston was born in 1895, eight months before the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson. He spent his career fighting to overturn that decision.’

He signed off by saying: “I’m Barack Obama, remembering Charles Hamilton Houston and celebrating a great moment in our history.”