Former President Barack Obama’s post containing a poignant photo and quote in response to the turmoil and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia has become the most popular tweet of all time.
"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion…" pic.twitter.com/InZ58zkoAm
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017
The powerful image showing Obama interacting with infants at a windowsill was captured by the award-winning Pete Souza who was the 44th President’s Official Whitehouse photographer throughout his two terms. Accompanying the image, Obama shared a quote from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom”, which said:
“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Part 1/3 of the tweet series attracted over 50,000 comments, was retweed over a million times and liked over 3.3 million times at the time of this post. The previous most popular tweet was from pop singer Ariana Grande in response to the cowardly terrorist attack at her concert in Manchester in May, 2017. The popularity of the tweet shows the power of accompanying a strong message with equally moving photography.