Hair Like Mine

Hair Like Mine is a 2009 photograph by Pete Souza of a five-year-old child, Jacob Philadelphia, touching the head of Barack Obama, then president of the United States.

"[1] Carlton Philadelphia's other son, Isaac, asked Obama about the cancellation of production of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet and was told that it was financially unviable.

Souza's surprise is reflected in the composition of the photograph with Jacob Philadelphia's arm obscuring his face, the blurring of his brother Isaac, and in the heads of the boys' parents being cut off by the framing of the image.

[4] Obama subsequently proffered his head to Edwin Caleb, a first grader in 2014 who remarked that he had short hair like his in a visit to Clarence Tinker Elementary School at MacDill Air Force Base.

"[3] Julia M. Klein wrote in the Chicago Tribune that the photo reminds "us of the symbolic heft of this breakthrough presidency" as "cogently as photographs of Obama beside the Martin Luther King Jr.

[6] Jackie Calmes, in The New York Times in 2012, described the popularity of the photo as "tangible evidence" that "Obama remains a potent symbol for blacks, with a deep reservoir of support.