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Friends of Barack Obama check, 8.25 x 3, filled out in another hand and signed by Obama, "Barack Obama," payable to noted civil rights activist and union leader Saul Mendelson for $20, June 3, 1997. In very fine condition. Encapsulated and graded by PSA/DNA as "GEM MT 10." Friends of Barack Obama was his official campaign committee; at the time he signed this check, Obama was roughly six months into his first term as an Illinois senator. Obama remains rare in signed checks.
The recipient, Saul Mendelson, was a noted Chicago-area Democratic Socialist, political organizer, civil rights activist, and union leader. He was also a friend of Obama, who spoke at Mendelson’s memorial service in 1998. His words: ‘I didn't have the good fortune to know Saul Mendelson as long as did many of those offering testimonials. But in the few years that I did know him, he was able to touch my life as he did so many others. Much of our relationship was built around a shared love of politics. His ability to organize a precinct was legendary, his advice on issues always sound.
But what became apparent to me as I got to know Saul was that for him, politics wasn't an academic exercise. Nor was it a mere pursuit of ambition or vanity. Saul's commitment to politics expressed his commitment to life: his abiding belief that we could make a better world for ourselves; his faith that words like freedom and equality and democracy were empty slogans unless people breathed life into them through collective action; his confidence that if people were informed and encouraged to participate in public life, they could be counted on to do the right thing.
It was those core beliefs that gave Saul that special air that he had, of a man unafraid to speak his mind, a man comfortable in his own skin. And by living out those beliefs, Saul imparted them to all of us. And so we salute Saul today, as an activist, scholar, union leader, loving husband and father; someone who, in his quiet, determined, diligent way, expressed the best values that our country has to offer, and made those communities that he touched better than they otherwise would have been.’
