"Nobody really wanted to leave the White House," recalled Tina Tchen, of the night, May 12, 2009, when the Obama Administration hosted the White House’s first-of-its-kind Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word. Tchen helped make that feeling happen, as the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, when the East Room filled with poets, students, and other guests for this historical White House event.
What none of them could have anticipated was just how historic the night—featuring novelist Michael Chabon, jazz singer Esperanza Spalding, pianist Eric Lewis, and actor James Earl Jones—would become. Slam poetry and more traditional verse shared a stage in one of America's most storied rooms, and the evening brimmed with something new. And then a young playwright named Lin-Manuel Miranda—a late addition to the event—took the stage.
He told the room he had something fresh to share, a piece he was just beginning to develop, maybe the opening of something larger. It was, he explained, a hip-hop piece about Alexander Hamilton, eliciting laughter from the audience.
"The President, the First Lady [were] kind of like, 'Oh well, good luck with that,'" Tchen recalls with a laugh, "because the idea that some musical about the first Secretary of the Treasury was not at that time anything that anybody thought would be successful.”
What Miranda performed that night was the opening number of what would become "Hamilton," the Broadway phenomenon that transformed American theater and made a Founding Father into a modern-day cultural icon.
The poetry jam was planned early in the Obama Administration. Tchen's office worked with the White House Social Office to create events that reflected the Obamas' values and their vision for the White House.
"It's significant that it was one of our first events," Tchen, who is now Executive Vice President, Programs for The Obama Foundation, said, "because it was a bit of a signal to how the Obamas thought about the arts and how they could use their platform from the White House as President and First Lady to showcase different kinds of art."
The Obamas wanted the White House, long home to classical performances and formal cultural programming, to reflect something broader. The poetry jam was their opening statement.
"They were going to be fresh," Tchen said of the events they envisioned. "They were going to be in the moment of what popular culture was, and bring popular culture into the White House. And they were going to be diverse."
For Tchen, the evening carried personal weight as well. Her eldest son, Patrick, then a college student at the University of California, Los Angeles, majoring in English with a focus on poetry, flew in for the event.
"To see the very thing that he was passionate about and he was actually studying and learning how to do at UCLA being on display at the White House was incredibly meaningful, and for me as his mom, it gave extra meaning to what was a really special event."
After the last poet left the stage, something unique happened: no one left.
There was no afterparty planned, no formal reception to move to. But Tchen says the crowd lingered in the corridors, in conversation, not ready to let the evening end.
"There was such an energy and warmth in the aftermath," Tchen recalled.
The Obamas' decision—bringing together diverse voices, mixing genres, and blending artists who might not ordinarily share a stage—became the template for arts programming across all eight years of the administration.
When Tchen left the White House in January 2017, she packed a box of items she had collected over the years: menus, programs, and invitations from significant events.
"I'm a little bit of a packrat," she shared. The poetry slam program was among them, tucked away in a desk drawer and then carefully stored in her basement.
Years later, as the Obama Presidential Center Museum prepared to open, the call went out for artifacts. Tchen went to her basement. The poetry program was something the Museum didn't yet have and represented something far beyond what anyone had anticipated of the event back in 2009.
"That particular event became so explosively famous because when ‘Hamilton’ exploded on the stage, the idea that it was debuted in this moment, where we were all kind of skeptical about it at one of our earliest White House events—that makes it a very special historic moment," Tchen said.
The program is on display on "The People's House" floor, and it’s in an exhibit called “Updating Traditions.” And for Tchen, it’s more than a keepsake from a memorable night. It's an expressive moment, one she hopes visitors will feel.
"The Obamas wanted people to understand that the arts belong to everyone," Tchen said. "And the kind of art we want[ed] to showcase isn't just classical music or award-winning performers; it's also things like slam poetry and what people were experimenting with.”
"The arts are a really essential part of our democracy," Tchen added. "It's how we express ourselves."
The Obama Presidential Center Museum opens June 19.