Politics and Progress in the New South

The Root explores where Obama, race and politics meet with Charlotte's young black mayor, Anthony Foxx.

Zoom | Photo Reprints

Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Anthony Foxx's 15th-floor office looks out onto a busy New South city that will get even busier in September 2012. Once the Democratic National Convention moves in for a week -- bringing along President Barack Obama and 35,000 delegates, politicians, celebrities and members of the media -- Foxx might be sharing only a bit of the spotlight. But it will shine brighter than any he's known so far. The 40-year-old Foxx, who has a 2011 re-election race to win on the way to acting as a convention host, noted parallel "life stories" that he and Obama share. "Even though he grew up in a vastly different part of the country and the world," said Foxx of Obama, "he was essentially raised by a single mother just as I was and was heavily influenced by his grandparents, as I was. "There was a 'Greatest Generation' element that greatly influenced both of us," Foxx said. He thinks that's important, "when the country and our city have been put through the wringer in a lot of ways" on issues from the economy to foreign policy. "There is a resilience built into me, having lived with people who had to struggle through the Great Depression and through the Second World War." What Foxx didn't immediately mention is that both are African-American elected officials, a fact that's both obvious and beside the point. At 50, Obama is the more experienced generational leader to Foxx and his occasional conversational partners such as Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, N.J., both 42 years old.