Coming Next
My father and me on a flight from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1975. The week long trip was one of the best times in our lives. What we didn’t know at the time was that Hawaii was the home of a young teenager who would one day become president. Barack Obama. Prologue Near midnight on election night in America, November 4, 2008, in a night of unbelievable change, I watched alone on television the scene unfolding in Grant Park, in the broad shoulders of Chicago. I had just finished saying goodbye to my father on the phone after a brief but exciting conversation. I had called him right after the news networks in unison had declared Barack Obama the winner and next president of the United States. These moments were just a few of the snapshots in a highly contested moment in history. It was a time when the world was focused on more than just an election—a time when the world was focused on the audacity to believe one can, and then do it.
© 2011 by Anthony Littlefield
My father was beaming with pride when he spoke about how his native state of California and its fifty-five electoral votes, along with those of the other western states had made it official. My father and I, each in our own way, wanted to take in the moment alone; we didn’t want to miss a single word of the world-wide news coverage of what was sure to be one of the most memorable moments in history. We agreed to talk again early the next day. Today the Democracy and the people had spoken.
I doubt very seriously if the Chicago night had ever experienced the level of noise as chants of Obama and “Yes We Can” rang out throughout the night at a deafening pitch. As the television cameras panned back and forth across the wildly excited crowd in the hundreds of thousands, many were over-come with euphoria. I could see faces of every color, people of all ages and demographics had gathered in force to celebrate the history making election. It seemed as though every hand and small American flag in America was waving in the Chicago air that night.
This same spectacular picture was repeated around the world from Chicago to Atlanta, to New York, to London, to Paris, to Berlin and to every village in the new president’s ancestral homeland of Kenya, making this a world-wide event of epic proportions. I, like many in the crowd was experiencing a range of emotions. It touched me deeply to see the tears streaming down the faces of the famous in the crowd, Oprah, Jesse Jackson (who I’m sure must have thought of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at this moment) and the not so famous too. On one hand, I was still numb, my mind unable to totally digest what had just happened. Was it really true, had America just elected its first African American president?
Since day one of his campaign, I think that many African Americans had lingering doubts about, whether or not, white voters would vote for Obama in numbers large enough for him to win the election. That doubt was answered with an unequivocal yes that night.When the president-elect and his family appeared on the stage together, the sight of them happily walking towards what seemed like an endless sea of people, forced my lips to tightened in an attempt to hold back tears of joy, but I was unable to do so.
I thought to myself, what an incredible journey this had been for them, beginning twenty-one months ago in Springfield, Illinois on a cold February day. As spectacular as tonight was, the real truth began to sink in that their journey was only half completed. Their futures, and the future, hopes, and aspirations of the world lay largely in their hands for the next four years and beyond. What an awesome responsibility this would turn out to be.
I’m sure that many people around the country had a number of reasons for what made tonight possible. For America, this seemed like vindication to her founding principles that we are all equal; for African Americans, vindication that we belonged, that the struggle for equality and perseverance made tonight possible; for young students of all colors in high schools and universities tonight was an indication that America’s racial past would not be its future.
While I wholeheartedly agree with each of these assessments, I was also thankful for personal reasons. I was thankful because at a time in my life when my relationship with my father was at its lowest level ever, it had been Obama’s march to victory that had in a sense rekindled the relationship between my father and I as we put aside our differences in time to witness this amazing story of triumph from its humble beginnings.
I still remember as though it were yesterday the phone call to my father in December of 2006. Because of our differences about our past, we hadn’t spoken in over a year. During our hiatus I, and I assumed my father had missed the one aspect of our relationship that had it made special over the years. Both of us shared a passion about history, politics and current events, and even though we lived in different cities, he in the Los Angeles area, and me in Columbus, Ohio, we enjoyed debating about the world around us. And I knew, from the beginning, deep down in my bones that the coming presidential race would be like no other in history, and I knew my father felt the same. I was glad to see that I was right. In our conversation we agreed to work on our differences, slowly. And eventually we did, coming to terms with what we could. We healed through this race.
Our conversation quickly turned to politics and how we saw the coming race from the common man’s point of view. In the coming pages, I share the phone conversations between my father and me from that first conversation, all the way to inauguration day, January 20, 2009. We debated about the candidates, their strengths and their weaknesses. My father’s very first question was “is Obama strong enough to win?”
Like many African Americans initially, my father had his own doubts about candidate Obama, as he first voiced support for Hillary Clinton. We openly and honestly debated the issue of race, after all one of the candidates was an African American with a compelling life story and growing support. Hillary Clinton, the former first lady who had already made recent history, and was now considered by many to be the strongest candidate to win it all. Also in the mix was southern-son, John Edwards, the Democratic nominee for Vice President in the last election but his campaign would flame-out early and eventually become mired in infidelity.
That was just on the Democratic side of our conversations. For the Republicans, John McCain, the venerable long term Arizona senator who had given everything short of his life to the country in decades of service. His campaign had once been given up for dead early in the primaries, but he would later emerge as the winner of the Republican Party nomination. If nothing else, he will be forever remembered for his selection of the controversial Sarah Palin, as his running mate. Then there were the men and women behind the candidates. The Obama team, architects of one of the greatest political triumphs in history. What was their strategy? How were they able to pull it off? How were they able to overcome adversity? The Clinton team, how and why did they lose when initially everything was in their favor?
Chapter 2
It was rather obvious that any realistic prospects for another Republican succeeding George Bush in 2008 were as unlikely as Al-Qaeda mastermind, Osama Bin-Laden, reaching an epiphany and suddenly turning himself into American authorities. Of course, he would then happily donate the twenty five million dollar bounty on his head to the Republican Party. By 2006, the Republican Party began sinking faster than the ill-fated Titanic—weighed down by two costly wars, a faltering economy beginning a straight trajectory downward (hitting critical mass just weeks before the election), and the ole fashion ass-whipping the Republican Party absorbed in the November 2006 mid term elections. These events would eventually turn out to be the ‘first shoe to drop’ so to speak as the political-capital that George Bush boasted about after his narrow reelection victory in 2004 was now in the red, and near worthless—a disgruntled public had clearly signaled at the ballot box that Americans were more than ready for change.
For the Democratic Party, a better future awaited them on the distant political horizon. With Bush nearing the end of his second term, and Cheney’s popularity lower than Bush’s, Cheney signaled that he had no interest in seeking the Oval Office, instead choosing an unceremonious exit from politics, destined to defend controversial decisions made on his watch for the remainder of his days. Not even the departed, lionized Republican hero, Ronald Regan, could pull his party out of this ditch. The coming race would be as wide open as the Arizona desert, and assuredly, for the Democrats taking.
From the beginning, the Democrats were in the driver’s seat. A sensible winning strategy would be to play it safe and nominate a middle of the road candidate—someone who had at least shown some courage, who had stood up and said, “wait a minute” about the Iraq war, the return to the Afghanistan war to the right track after years of neglect, and someone with a clear and sensible plan to change the present economic course. Perhaps if John Kerry had waited until now, this might have been his time. Like 2000 candidate, Al Gore, the time for Senator Kerry, too, had come and gone, bulldozed beneath Carl Rove style politics.
Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, resumed his dreams of winning the presidency the moment Kerry finished the last sentence of his concession speech, on the night of the 2004 election. Maybe it’s only natural that losing Vice Presidential candidates silently think, that, if only they had been on the top of the ticket, then the pages of history might have read differently.
The boyish looking and fast talking Edwards rose from humble beginnings as the son of a textile worker in North Carolina to become the first in his family to attend college, later earning a law degree from the University of North Carolina, with honors. After entering the law profession, Edwards became an extremely successful trial lawyer in North Carolina—he achieved an impressive string of court room victories from 1984 to 1996 for his clients, everyday folks, winning eye-popping dollar figures for families who had lost loved ones to tragic but preventable accidents. He was the common man’s lawyer.
Edwards entered the political arena in 1997 as a Democrat. Choosing to forego the traditional path of working one’s way up the political ladder through the mediums of the state legislature and U.S. House races, Edwards reached for the top with a successful run for the United States Senate in 1998 when he defeated Republican North Carolina Senator Lauch Faircloth, the incumbent. Edwards received over a million votes.
While in the Senate, Edwards championed a number of liberal causes. Most notably, the causes focused on Americans trapped in the never ending cycle of poverty and the Democratic mantra, universal health care. By the year 2000, Edwards was beginning to set his sights higher in the political sphere by testing the waters in the important, traditional out-of-the-gate state, Iowa, with an eye towards 2004. Edwards took a calculated risk—choosing to forego another run for the Senate at the end of his six year term to concentrate solely on a presidential run. Edward’s dreams of the presidency were eventually dashed as he finished a distant second to Kerry in the primaries. Switching to the next option, Edwards began his behind the scenes campaign for the Vice Presidential slot, throwing his support towards Kerry and getting the Vice Presidential nod on the ticket.
While he and Kerry would eventually lose to Bush/Cheney in the general election, they did garner a respectable 59 million votes, with the closely contested election coming down to several key states—one of those key states was my own state, Ohio. So important was Ohio to the election that both Kerry and Bush spent the waning hours of the election in my hometown of Columbus—Bush, working the phone banks at Republican headquarters in the shadow of the downtown skyline on Rich Street, making last minute calls to voters, and Kerry with the legendary Bruce Springsteen by his side at The Ohio State University until late in the night on election-eve. The phone bank paid off for Bush, leaving Kerry behind. A shrewd example of the Bush team putting their man at the right place, at the right time. For better or worse, after all Bush had won reelection.
The dust from the election had hardly settled when the Edwards family suffered another critical blow. Edwards revealed that his wife, Elizabeth was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. This would be the second family tragedy to befall the Edwards’s family in recent years—the first had occurred in 1996 when John and Elizabeth faced every loving parent’s nightmare—the sudden death of a child. Their eldest son, Wade, died in an automobile accident at the young, innocent age of sixteen.
By all appearances, the Edwards family, which included three other younger children, rallied around Elizabeth during her cancer treatment, like all close families do when confronted with life and death circumstances. John and Elizabeth met while in law school, Elizabeth gave birth to several children well past the normal child bearing years for most women, with her last child arriving as she neared fifty. Elizabeth was considered an asset to John in his short but eventful political career. Now, her courageous fight against the dreaded disease elevated the public’s awareness of, and sympathy for, Elizabeth—she would later author several heart warming and inspirational books about her struggles, “Saving Grace” and “Resilience.”
Edwards had a chance in the 2008 election.
Edwards certainly had his 2004 presidential campaign experience to rely on, but it was Hillary Clinton who had an even better intangible that instantly elevated her to front runner for the Democrats. She had the Clinton name and all that implied.
In her life, Hillary Rodham Clinton excelled at every level always looking forward. The Wellesley College, Yale Law School graduate and former Girl Scout became interested in politics in Park Ridge, IL. The one-day leading Democratic presidential hopeful first began her journey into politics as a youthful Republican volunteer. In 1960 and 1964, Hillary campaigned for Richard Nixon, and later, staunch conservative, Barry Goldwater (can we ever forgive Hillary). The reemergence of Richard Nixon in 1968, and his subsequent deal with the conservative south, whose ranks were rapidly filling the Republican Party—the party of the “Great Emancipator,” Abraham Lincoln. People were leaving the party in droves (men and women clearly on the wrong side of history) because of their reprehensible opposition to Kennedy/Johnson Civil Rights legislation. Hillary, like the nation was traumatized by what she saw throughout the South in these desperate years—now jaded, the once dedicated Hillary made a clean break with the Republicans, for good. But poetic justice would be in Hillary’s future in 1974 when she became a member of the Impeachment inquiry staff, which advised the House Committee on the Judiciary, which led to the eventual resignation of Richard Nixon.
Along the way in her personal journey, Hillary would later achieve an impressive numbers of firsts in a career that is far from finished. Hillary’s impressive collection of firsts began when she became the first Wellesley student ever to give the commencement address in 1969. Hillary was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the Legal Services Corporation Board in 1977. Several years later she would become it’s first woman chair; first female partner of the Rose Law Firm; the first former “First Lady” to run (and win) for public office (Dolly Madison, wife of the 4th president, James Madison, would be very proud); and first female Senator from the state of New York.
Now, in the early days of 2007, as Hillary put it, “I’m in it to win it” she officially embarked on the pursuit of what she hoped to be her greatest first—the first woman ever to be elected to the highest office in the land—the Leader of the free world—the most powerful person in the world—the presidency of the United States.
The relationship between Bill and Hillary Clinton was more than a mere marriage—Bill and Hillary were an equal partnership in every aspect. Theirs was a very unique relationship between two people who are highly intelligent, equally ambitious and equally skilled in the art and intricacies of politics. It was clear in their marriage that Hillary, too, would seek to fulfill her own political destiny—that her political talents and connections honed over a life time would not go to waste—Hillary would not remain in Bill’s voluminous shadow forever. But the first step was moving Bill up the political ladder. With Hillary at his side, after his first initial political loss in the 1974 Arkansas congressional race, Bill began his climb up the political ladder—first as Arkansas Attorney General, Governor, then later, winning the ultimate political prize, becoming the 42nd President of the United States in 1992 defeating Bush 41 (George H.W. Bush.)
Every spouse of presidential candidates are wholly involved in their spouse’s political careers to some extent—from the campaign for office, and if they are fortunate, to elected office. But with Hillary, early on, as the First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary carefully carved out her own political identity, most notably, as an effective child and health care advocate, a passionate commitment ten years in the making. In addition to chairing state government committees at the bequest of husband, Bill, Hillary served on several corporate boards, including mega store chain, Wal-Mart.
The Clintons road to success had its share of controversial pot-holes along the way. One of the larger hub cap removers involved Bill and allegations of his extramarital affairs. This came to a boiling point in the 1992 CBS Sixty Minutes interview, viewed by millions. With Bill in the midst of the hotly contested Democratic Primary—Bill squarely denied having an affair with Jennifer Flowers, but did acknowledge “causing pain in his marriage.” Hillary added a real zinger in the interview when she defiantly said, “You know, I'm not sitting here – some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.” Hillary would go on to make it clear she was committed to Bill, “I'm sitting here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together. And you know, if that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him.” This commitment we would later learn Bill didn’t deserve.
Yet, despite the Whitehouse years setbacks, most notably, the Clinton Health Care initiative, the real first serious attempt to push universal health care through Congress, which Bill tapped her to lead, which Congress in turn ruthlessly savaged, then rejected, and, of course, the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, near impeachment and the personal humiliation of Hillary, she quickly put these issues behind her, and once the Clintons were out of the Whitehouse, she would defy her critics by immediately stepping out on her own and going full steam ahead with “Hillary Time”. She had the audacity to seek, and then win a New York Senatorial primary and general election, a monumental achievement, and a move that would eventually put a goal once thought unachievable within striking distance in her near future.
In modern day presidential politics, Hillary was not the first woman to seek the Democratic nomination for the office of president—that historic distinction belongs to the late New York Congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm, who, in 1972 was the first woman and African American to try before losing to the Democratic Primary winner, George McGovern. McGovern would be shellacked by Richard Nixon, who won his second term. This was not the first political first in Shirley’s memorable career—four years earlier in 1968, Shirley became the first Black woman elected to Congress. In addition to Shirley’s milestone, that same turbulent year, another Black politician, Carl Stokes, was sworn in as the 51st mayor of Cleveland, Ohio becoming the first Black mayor of a major American city, paving the way for a host of future African American mayors across the country from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.
Other African Americans followed the path Shirley courageously blazed in 1972—Civil Rights activists and preachers, Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, and Al Shaprton as recently as 2004—Jackson did reasonably well, winning primary and caucuses in his runs, but the cold hard reality was that none were given a serious chance of succeeding on a national level. While each was popular within the black community, and was able to elicit a small amount of support within the white liberal ranks, broad base support, a superb organized political machine, and most important of all, the ability to raise incredible amounts of money was simply out of their political reach. While Shirley had legislative experience in both the New York state body, and U.S. Congress—neither Jackson nor Sharpton had ever experienced the rigors of campaigning and holding public office prior to running for president. Not to mention that their advocacy backgrounds were probably considered too militant and liberal by many white voters. However, these very same activists were a part of a generation who made a significant down payment in blood, sweat and tears in paving the way for dreams not yet dreamt.
Despite the eventual outcome of the 2004 Presidential election, looking back on the Democratic Convention that year in Boston, one speech above all others was eagerly anticipated by Democratic leaders and Convention delegates. Waiting in the holding room just prior to his keynote address, with his wife of twelve years, Michelle, by his side, Illinois Senatorial candidate, Barack Hussein Obama waited coolly and calmly to step out on the stage and address not only the packed Fleet Center crowd of delegates, but a national and international audience in the millions. Obama was selected by the Kerry team to deliver the keynote address as acknowledgement that this young, talented Black politician, considered by many to have the “right stuff”, was a Democratic star of the first magnitude in the making. In Obama, the Democrats had a young, handsome, articulate politician with a compelling life story and a budding, beautiful family. An added plus was that the charismatic Obama was a captivating orator. I, like many other Americans would get a chance to see Obama on the big stage for the first time that memorable evening.
At the time, Obama was involved in his quest to become a U.S. Senator. If elected, he would be the third African American to serve in the Senate since Hiram Revels in the aftermath of the Civil War in 1870 (Edward Brooke, MA. and Carol Moseley Braun, IL. were the other two). His opponent was a fiery, Black Conservative , Alan Keyes, a Maryland native, who had served under Ronald Reagan, and was the Republican replacement for Jack Ryan who withdrew from the race because of an alleged sex scandal. Keyes, called a “carpetbagger” by some in the media since he was not an Illinois resident (Illinois voters would later agree), Obama defeated Keyes decisively, with Keyes getting a meager 27% of votes). In defense of the Washington Post label of “carpet bagging” Keyes said in his case he felt a moral obligation to run after being asked to by the state GOP. "You are doing what you believe to be required by your respect for God's will, and I think that that's what I'm doing in Illinois".
On that night as Obama stepped on the stage, Michelle’s playful words from a moment ago were ringing in his ear: “Don’t screw this up, buddy.” Obama may have reflected back to another unforgettable moment in his past, a time when he stepped up to a microphone for the very first time in his life. As a young impressionable student at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama felt an urge he had never felt before. For the first time, he wanted to find the words, then speak them in a way that would sway the masses. He and other students were making preparations for a rally on campus to protest South African apartheid in the early 1980’s.
In his highly acclaimed memoir about his early life: Dreams of My Father, Barack recalled that magical moment: “…In my mind it somehow became more than just a two-minute speech, more than a way to prove my political orthodoxy…If I could just find the words, I had thought to myself. With the right words, everything could change—South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in the world. When the time was right, Obama stepped forward, “I was still in a trancelike state when I mounted the stage. For I don’t know how long, I just stood there: the sun was in my eyes, the crowd of a few hundred restless after lunch…. Without waiting for a cue, I stepped to the microphone.”
“There’s a struggle going on,” Obama said, his voice barely carrying beyond the first couple of rows of people. “I say, there’s a struggle going on! It’s happening an ocean away. But it’s a struggle that touches each and everyone of us….” Obama would end by saying, “…It’s a choice between dignity and servitude; Between fairness and injustice; Between commitment and indifference; A choice between right and wrong.”
“I stopped,” Obama would say. “The crowd was quiet now, watching me. Somebody started to clap. “Go on with it, Barack,” somebody else shouted. “Tell it like it is.” Then the others started in, clapping, cheering, and I knew that I had them, that the connection had been made.
I didn’t hear his speech at Occidental College but it turns out that Obama did indeed have the right words, for in that brief moment, the students in attendance did take notice of the words he had to say, and responded in kind to his conviction. Now, years later, in his highly anticipated keynote address, Barack’s theme would touch on how his father’s improbable story began an ocean away. That America, a beacon of freedom, offered his mother and father the opportunity to study for a better life, pursue their dreams and find love. That in America, unity and hope are the bedrock principles that have served America well since its beginnings, and would serve her well in the future. “My story is part of the larger American story,” Obama would say. “[In] no other country on earth is my story even possible.”And when Barack concluded his soul-stirring Convention keynote address, filled with words of hope and unity, to the delegates and world-at-large, again, Barack did find the right words. Barack did make a connection, not only did he hear the applause in the packed convention center; Barack heard a thunderous applause that rang out around the world. In the life of Barack Obama, that night, a course for the future was set in stone, irreversible, immoveable, and unstoppable.
Obama, a first generation African American on his father’s side, his father, Barack Obama Sr., a native of Kenya, and his mother, Ann Dunham, a white woman of Kansas heritage, whose family linage can be traced back to English, German, Irish and Welsh ancestry, had met while students at the University of Hawaii. His parents wed in February 1961 in Hawaii at a time when the nation was embroiled in a turbulent Civil Rights struggle where in many places racial mingling was taboo, let alone “interracial marriages” where, in many states, was even against the law. A son, Barack Jr., soon followed in August 1961, in Hawaii.
Barack Sr., and Ann would not remain together, Barack Sr., later chose to study finance at Harvard University, however, the scholarship did not include expenses to take care of a young family, so Ann and young Barack remained in Hawaii with her parents. Ann would later file for divorce in 1964. He would be an absentee father to young Barack, with the exception of one very brief visit in 1971 in Hawaii.
Barack Sr., had been a part of the young Kenyan generation to go abroad in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when Kenya gained its independence from England. Soon, young, intelligent black Kenyans were enrolling in Western universities in Europe and America with the hope that upon completion of their studies they would return home to help build a modern and prosperous Kenya. After getting his economics degree, but falling short of his doctorate at Harvard, Barack Sr., returned to his native Kenya and began his career, and a life with other women and other children.
While at Harvard, Bararck Sr., began a relationship with a Jewish-American, Ruth Beatrice Baker, a elementary school teacher. Ruth would follow Barack to Kenya. They would marry in December of 1964, (his 2nd white wife) and have two sons, Mark and David. Ruth and Barack would divorce in 1973. Barack senior’s career began with Shell Oil Company, then, economist positions in the government Ministries of Transportation and Finance. But it would be an article by the senior Obama that would be his undoing with the Kenyan government. In 1965, the East Africa Journal published an article by Obama that severely criticized the government’s economic plan. Obama fell into displeasure with Kenyan leader and first African president, the legendary, Jomo Kenyatta. It was a very bad move on Obama’s part. This all but ended his promising career.
Long time senior Obama friend, Philip Ochieng, summed-up Obama’s personality by saying, “Obama was extraordinary clever, but also cruel and given to boasting about his brain and wealth which was the reason for his failure.” Tragically in 1982 the senior Obama, on a steady personal decline, was involved in a serious auto accident and had both legs amputated. He would die in another auto accident in Nairobi later in 1982.
Ann would later remarry to another student of international studies pursuing his masters whom she met when she resumed her studies at the University of Hawaii, Lolo Setoro, from Indonesia. They would later wed, then, Lolo, Ann and Barack moved to Indonesia, settling outside of the bustling city of Jakarta. Together, Lolo and Ann would have a daughter, Maya. Obama would say about his early life experiences in Indonesia: “It had taken me less than six months to learn the Indonesian language, its customs and its legends. I survived chicken pox, measles, and the sting of teachers’ bamboo switches. The children of farmers, servants, and low-level bureaucrats had become my best friends, and together we ran the streets morning and night, hustling odd jobs, catching crickets….”
The political climate in Indonesia began to change. Ann grew more and more worried about her young son’s safety, and even more concerned about the progress of his formal education. Ann sent young Barack back to Hawaii to live with her parents in 1971. Stanley and Madelyn (Toots, short for Tutu, grandmother in Hawaiian) Dunham, provided Barry (the name family and friends fondly called Barack) a good home and a solid education. He would come of age in the Hawaiian paradise, experiencing the growing pains all young boys experience in these impressionable years—in particular, in his early teenage years, Barack struggled with his own racial identity, living on an Island with very few other African Americans, yet surrounded by a family unit of white culture with grandparents he loved and depended on. Ann and her parents made it a point to expose Barack to African American history (Ann would have Barack listen to the music of Mahala Jackson, the greatest gospel singer, ever) and encouraged him to learn about his father’s African culture. Ann would return to Hawaii from Indonesia with her two year old daughter, Maya in 1972 to begin graduate study at the University of Hawaii. Maya would return back to Indonesia with Ann once Ann received her M.A. to begin a long career in Anthropology. Maya (named after poet Maya Angelou) would later return to Hawaii and attend the same high school as Barack, the Punahou School, graduating in 1988. She then attended Barnard College in New York, later she earned a M.A. at New York University. Maya completed her education with a PhD from the University of Hawaii in international comparative education. (Barack’s paternal half sister, Auma Obama is a graduate of Heidelberg University in Heidelberg, Germany with a degree in German Studies. Auma has a PhD from the University of Bayreuth). It’s easy to see that education has played a major role in Obama’s family.
In Dreams From My Father, Barack shares one memorable experience from his mother, who was eleven at the time, and grandparent’s past while the family was living in Texas in the early fifties: “…When Toot got home from work, she would usually find my mother alone in the front yard, swinging her legs off the porch or lying in the grass, pulled into some solitary world of her own. Except for one day. There was that one hot, windless day when Toot came home to find a crowd of children gathered outside the picket fence that surrounded their house. As Toot drew closer, she makes out the sounds of mirthless laughter, the contortions of rage and disgust on the children’s faces. The children were chanting, in a high-pitched, alternating rhythm:
“Nigger lover!”
“Dirty Yankee!”
“Nigger lover!”
The children scattered when they saw Toot, but not before one of the boys had sent the stone in his hand sailing over the fence. Toot’s eyes followed the stone’s trajectory as it came to rest at the foot of a tree. And there she saw the cause for all the excitement: my mother and a black girl of about the same age lying side by side on their stomachs in the grass, their skirts gathered up above their knees, their toes dug into the ground, their heads propped up on their hands in front of one of my mother’s books. From a distance the two girls seemed perfectly serene beneath the leafy shade. It was only when Toot opened the gate that she realized the black girl was shaking and my mother’s eyes shone with tears. The girls remained motionless, paralyzed with fear, until Toot finally leaned down and put her hands on both of their heads.
“If you two are going to play,” she said, “then for goodness sake, go on inside. Come on. Both of you.” She picked up my mother and reached for the other girl’s hand, but before she could say anything more, the girl was in a full sprint, her long legs like a whippet’s as she vanished down the street.
Gramps was beside himself when he heard what had happened. He interrogated my mother, wrote down names. The next day he took the morning off from work to visit the school principal. He personally called the parents of some of the offending children to give them a piece of his mind. And from every adult that he spoke to, he received the same response:
“You best talk to your daughter, Mr. Dunham. White girls don’t play with coloreds in this town.”
In the end, Ann lived her life understanding and helping those who needed help the most. Barack wonderfully summed up his mother’s life when he said, “…She had spent the last ten years doing what she loved. She traveled the world, working in distant villages of Asia and Africa, helping women buy a sewing machine or a milk cow or an education that might give them a foothold in the world’s economy…” As his mother’s life came to an end in 1995, Barack said, “She managed her illness with grace and good humor, and she helped my sister and me push on with our lives, despite our dreads, our denials, our sudden constrictions of the heart…In my daughters I see her every day…”
After graduating high school with honors in 1979, Obama enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles, but later transferred to Columbia University in New York where he graduated in 1983 with a degree in Political Science. Obama worked two years in New York for a consulting house to a multinational corporation, never forgetting his true ambition about one day becoming a community organizer, convinced that the right kind of change he felt America needed would come from the ground up in many communities desperate for change. After what seemed like endless rejections by community based organizations, in 1985, he accepted a trainee position with Marty Kaufman, a Chicago based community organizer. Barack poured himself into helping Southside citizens with the least power or money into demanding the decent treatment anyone would expect for those in less than adequate public housing.
After cutting his teeth in the community organizing field with some small successes, like his father before him, Barack decided to further his education and enrolled at Harvard University. There, he excelled as a student in his pursuit of a law degree. Obama would later graduate from Harvards’ Law School, magna cum laude.
With unlimited possibilities in his future, Obama decided to return to Chicago to continue his passion and fulfill his destiny which he hoped would include politics. During his Harvard years, while on summer break, he clerked at a Chicago law firm and met Michelle Robinson, an attorney at the firm who would serve as his mentor. After he and Michelle began dating, Obama recalled how she first viewed him: “Later Michelle would tell me that she had been pleasantly surprised when I walked into her office; the drugstore snapshot that I’d sent in for the firm directory made my nose look a little big (even more enormous than usual, she might say), and she had been skeptical when the secretaries who’d seen me during my interview told her I was cute. Michelle said, “I figured that they were just impressed with any black man with a suit and a job.”
Obama adored the cohesion of the Robinson family, a mother and a father, together as the anchors, strong and steady. Michelle and older brother, Craig excelled in high school, and both earned degrees from Princeton University, Michelle graduating cum laude. Michelle, like Barack, would earn a law degree from Harvard. Obama knew early on in his relationship with Michelle that he wanted to be a part of the Robinson family for the rest of his life. “Six months after Michelle and I met, her father, Frazier, died suddenly of complications after a kidney operation. I flew back to Chicago and stood at his gravesite, Michelle’s head on my shoulder. As the casket was lowered, I promised Frasier Robinson that I would take care of his girl.” Barack and Michelle would later wed in 1992, and two darling little girls, Malia and Sasha, would soon follow.
In 1996, the opportunity to enter Chicago politics presented itself to the then Civil Rights attorney and University of Chicago law professor. Obama won a seat in the Illinois Senate, a seat he would hold until 2004. Obama did suffer one stinging defeat in politics. Four years earlier in 2000, then Illinois State Senator, attempted an ill-fated bid to unseat the popular incumbent and former Black Panther Party member, Bobby Rush of Southside Chicago fame in the Democratic Congressional House primary. Rush had recently lost badly in his bid to become mayor of Chicago to Richard Daley, and was now considered vulnerable in retaining his House seat.
Obama would say how things went from bad to worse in his campaign: “I still burn, for example, at the thought of my one loss in politics, a drubbing in 2000 at the hands of incumbent Democratic Congressman, Bobby Rush. It was a race in which everything that could go wrong did go wrong, in which my own mistakes were compounded by tragedy and farce.” Obama went on to point out one glaring mistake in particular: “With a few thousand dollars raised, I commissioned my first poll and discovered that Mr. Rush’s name recognition stood at about 90 percent, while mine stood at 11 percent. His approval rating hovered around 70 percent—mine at 8. In that way I learned one of the cardinal rules of modern politics: Do the polls before you announce.” In this losing effort Obama realized that despite his hard work as a community organizer and state senator in Chicago, while he had done very well with progressive Whites and Latinos, African Americans on the Southside had yet to hear his message. By 2002 that had changed largely through his efforts to pass legislation that Southside constituents would benefit from.
Two years later in early 2007, on a cold February day in Springfield, Illinois in the shadow of the old capitol, ground where Abraham Lincoln once walked, now U.S. Senator Obama was about to set into motion a course of action, that if successful, would make history. Obama would dare to have the audacity to think that an African American could become the President of the United States. I arrived home in time to watch his announcement on CNN news. While other African Americans had run for the office, this guy was markedly different. His life story, his envious and unquestionable academic achievement at Harvard Law School—his accession to the U.S. Senate by winning an overwhelming state-wide victory, his commitment to community, his message of unity were all undeniable truths. Yet, as I listened to his booming voice cut through the cold, crisp air, I wondered to myself, “is America ready for an African American president.”
I didn’t have an answer.
But history did.
