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Barack Obama Sr.

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Barack Obama, Sr.
Born4 April 1936
Kanyadhiang village, Rachuonyo District, Kenya Colony[1]
Died24 November 1982 (aged 46)
Nairobi, Kenya[2]
Resting placeNyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya, Kenya[3]
NationalityBritish[4]
Kenyan[5]
Alma materUniversity of Hawaii
Harvard University
OccupationEconomist
Known forFather of U.S. President Barack Obama
Partner(s)Kezia Aoko
Stanley Ann Dunham
Ruth Nidesand
Jael Otieno[6][7][8]
Children1. (with Kezia Aoko): Abongo (Roy) Obama, Auma Obama,
Abo Obama, Bernard Obama
2. (with Ann Dunham): Barack Obama II
3. (with Ruth Nidesand): Mark Ndesandjo,[9] David Ndesandjo
4. (with Jael): George Obama
Parent(s)Hussein Onyango Obama and Akumu Habiba[3]

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (4 April 1936 − 24 November 1982) was a Kenyan senior governmental economist, and the father of the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama. He is a central subject in his son's memoir, Dreams from My Father.

Early life

File:Obama's Grandmother.jpg
Photograph of Barack Obama, Sr. with his mother, Akumu

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Kanyadhiang village, Rachuonyo District[1] on the shores of Lake Victoria just outside Kendu Bay, Kenya Colony, at the time a colony of the British Empire. He was raised in the village of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Nyanza Province.[11] His family are members of the Luo ethnic group.

Obama, Sr. was a son of Hussein Onyango Obama (c. 1895-1979), who had at least three wives. His mother was Habiba Akumu Nyanjango of Karabondi, Kenya, his father's second wife through an arranged marriage. However, he was raised by Onyango's third wife, Sarah Ogwel of Kogelo, after Akumu left her family and separated from her husband in 1945.[3][12] Before working as a cook for missionaries in Nairobi, Onyango had travelled widely, enlisting in the British colonial forces and visiting Europe, India, and Zanzibar, where he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam and took the name Hussein. His father also made all his wives convert to Islam. Hussein Onyango was jailed by the British for six months in 1949 due to his involvement in the Kenyan independence movement. According to Sarah Onyango Obama, Onyango was subjected to brutal torture which caused permanent physical disabilities.[13] Although Obama Sr. was born into a Muslim and Christian family,[14] he became an atheist as a young man.[10]

Education and fatherhood

Kenya

While still living near Kendu Bay, Obama Sr. attended Gendia Primary School and transferred to Ng’iya Intermediate School once his family moved to Siaya District.[1] From 1950 to 1953, he studied at Maseno National School, an exclusive Christian boarding school in Maseno that is run by the Anglican Church of Kenya. (Dreams from my Father, 2004 edition, p. 418). The head teacher, B.L. Bowers, described Obama Sr. in his records as "very keen, steady, trustworthy and friendly. Concentrates, reliable and out-going."[15] In 1954, after attending the Maseno National School, Obama Sr. was married for the first time. At the age of eighteen, he and Kezia Aoko[16] were married in a tribal ceremony. They had Malik and Auma during their marriage and while Obama Sr. was married to his third wife, he and Kezia allegedly had Abo (aka Roy) and Bernard. [17]

In 1959, Obama Sr. received a scholarship in economics through a program organised by nationalist leader Tom Mboya. The program offered Western educational opportunities to outstanding Kenyan students.[18][19][20] "Leaving behind his infant son, Roy, and his young wife, Kezia, who was pregnant with their daughter, Auma, he flew to America."[21]

As noted in a 3/30/08 article[22] by Michael Dobbs in The Washington Post, President Obama misspoke of his father's scholarship on two occasions. In a speech in Selma, Alabama on 3/4/07, then-Senator Obama said, "The Kennedys decided: 'We're going to do an airlift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama [Sr.] got one of those tickets and came over to this country.'"[23] However, as the Dobbs article states, the Kennedy family did not become associated with the educational airlift until 1960, a year after Obama Sr. was studying in the United States. Initial financial supporters of the program included Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, and Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, a literacy advocate who provided most of the financial support for Obama Sr.'s early years in the United States, according to the Tom Mboya archives at Stanford University. "Some of the money provided by the Kennedys was used to pay off old debts and subsidize student stipends. … [Obama Sr.] and other members of the 1959 cohort benefited only indirectly from Kennedy family support."[18] The Dobbs article does note that "Obama spokesman Bill Burton acknowledged yesterday that the senator from Illinois had erred in crediting the Kennedy family with a role in his father's arrival in the United States."

United States

At the age of 23, Obama Sr. enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He had abandoned Islam; he was an atheist by the time he moved to the United States.[10] On 2 February 1961, Obama Sr. married fellow student Stanley Ann Dunham in Maui, Hawaii,[24] though she would not find out that her new husband was already married until much later.[25] Obama Sr.'s and Dunham's son, Barack Obama II, was born on 4 August 1961. Dunham quit her studies to care for the baby, while Obama Sr. completed his degree. He graduated from the University of Hawaii in June 1962 (and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa[26]), leaving shortly thereafter to travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would begin graduate study at Harvard University in the fall.[25] Later that summer, Dunham and year-old baby Barack stopped to visit her friends in Mercer Island, Washington, the Seattle suburb where she had grown up,[25][27][28] before joining Obama Sr. in Cambridge. However, mother and son soon returned to Seattle, where she enrolled at the University of Washington.[25][27] Dunham, missing her family, then moved back to Hawaii[27] and filed for divorce in Honolulu in January 1964. Obama Sr. did not contest, and the divorce was granted on 20 March 1964.[24] He maintained an infrequent correspondence with his ex-wife and son through letters and visited them both only once in 1971 when Barack was 10 years old.[25]

While at Harvard, Obama Sr. met a Jewish American teacher named Ruth Nidesand. She followed him to Kenya when he returned there after he received a master's degree (AM) in economics from Harvard in 1965.[29] Nidesand eventually became his third wife and had two sons with him, Mark and David. She divorced Obama Sr. amid allegations of domestic abuse.[17][30]

Return to Kenya

On his return to his native Kenya in 1965, Obama Sr. was hired by an oil company and then served as an economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Transport and later became a senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance.[31] In 1959, a monograph written by him had been published by the Kenyan Department of Education, entitled Otieno jarieko. Kitabu mar ariyo. 2: Yore mabeyo mag puro puothe. (English: Otieno, the wise man. Book 2: Wise ways of farming.)[32]

In 1965, Obama Sr. published a paper entitled "Problems Facing Our Socialism" in the East Africa Journal, harshly criticising the blueprint for national planning, "African Socialism and Its Applicability to Planning in Kenya", which had been produced by Tom Mboya's Ministry of Economic Planning and Development. The article was signed "Barak H. Obama."[33] As his son described it in his memoir, Obama Sr.'s conflict with President Kenyatta destroyed his career.[34] The decline began after Tom Mboya's assassination in 1969. Obama Sr. was fired from his job by Jomo Kenyatta, was blacklisted in Kenya, and began to drink. He had a serious car accident, spent almost a year in the hospital, and by the time he visited his son in Hawaii in late 1971, he already had a bad leg.[35] Obama Sr.'s life fell into drinking and poverty, from which he never recovered. His friend, Kenyan journalist Philip Ochieng, has described Obama Sr.'s difficult personality and drinking problems in the Kenya newspaper The Daily Nation.[18] Obama Sr. later lost both legs in another automobile collision, and subsequently lost his job. He fathered another son named George. Six months after George's birth, he died at the age of 46, in a third car crash in Nairobi.[18] He is interred in his native village of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District. His funeral was attended by ministers Robert Ouko, Oloo Aringo and other prominent political figures.[1]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d The Standard, 14 November 2008: Obama’s dad and his many loves Cite error: The named reference "loves" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ Sanders, Edmund (17 Jul. 2008). "Obama not quite his Kenyan father's son". Los Angeles Times. p. A1. Archived from the original on 17 Jul. 2008. Retrieved 24 Feb. 2009. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate=, |date=, and |archivedate= (help)
  3. ^ a b c Kimberly Powell (2008). "Ancestry of Barack Obama". About.com. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  4. ^ At least until 11 December 1963.
  5. ^ From 12 December 1963 (Kenyan independence; cf. The Constitution of Kenya, VI.87.1).
  6. ^ Scott Fornek (9 September 2007). "The Obama Family Tree". The Chicago Sun Times. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |~url= ignored (help)
  7. ^ Rob Crilly (22 August 2008). "Life is Good in My Nairobi Slum, Says Barack Obama's Younger Brother". The Times. London. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  8. ^ Mike Pflanz (21 August 2008). "Barack Obama is My Inspiration, Says Lost Brother". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  9. ^ Michael Sheridan (27 July 2008). "Barack Obama's Brother Pushes Chinese Imports on US". The Times Online. London. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  10. ^ a b c Obama, Barack (16 Oct. 2006). "My Spiritual Journey". TIME. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  11. ^ Ombuor, Joe (4 Nov. 2008). "Obama's father and the origin of Muslim name". The Standard. Retrieved 13 Nov. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  12. ^ Reitwiesner, William Addams. "Ancestry of Barack Obama". Retrieved 21 Nov. 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  13. ^ "Beatings and abuse made Barack Obama's grandfather loathe the British". The Times. London. 3 December 2008. Retrieved 7 Mar. 2009. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
  14. ^ "Obama's grandma slams 'untruths'". USA Today. Associated Press. 5 March 2008. Retrieved 26 Apr. 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help) See also this correction.
  15. ^ Oywa, John (4 Nov. 2008). "Tracing Obama Snr's steps as a student at Maseno School". The Standard. Retrieved 8 Nov. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  16. ^ http://www.eastandard.net/uselections/InsidePage.php?id=1143998528
  17. ^ a b staff writer (4 November 2009). Associated Press http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33608282/ns/today-white_house. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |last access date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |title1= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |titles2= ignored (help)
  18. ^ a b c d Michael Dobbs (30 March 2008). "Obama Overstated Kennedy's Role in Helping His Father". The Washington Post. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  19. ^ "Oprah Talks to Bobby Kennedy Jr". O, The Oprah Magazine. February, 2007. Retrieved 17 June 2009. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  20. ^ "A father's charm, absence", Boston Globe 21 September 2008
  21. ^ Rice, Xan (6 June 2008). "'Barack's Voice was Just Like His Father's—I Thought He had Come Back from the Dead'". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  22. ^ "Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father". Washington Post. March, 2008. Retrieved 31 July 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  23. ^ http://www.barackobama.com/2007/03/04/selma_voting_rights_march_comm.php "Selma Voting Rights March Commemoration"
  24. ^ a b Ripley, Amanda (9 Apr. 2008). "The Story of Barack Obama's Mother". Time. Retrieved 9 Apr. 2007. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  25. ^ a b c d e Maraniss, David (22 Aug. 2008). "Though Obama Had to Leave to Find Himself, It Is Hawaii That Made His Rise Possible". The Washington Post. Retrieved 27 Oct. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  26. ^ "U.S. Presidents Share a Phi Beta Kappa Connection," Phi Beta Kappa Society Focus News (retrieved 21 January 2009).
  27. ^ a b c Martin, Jonathan. Obama's mother known here as "uncommon", Seattle Times (2008-04-08).
  28. ^ Montgomery, Rick. “Barack Obama’s mother more than just a Kansas girl”, The Lawrence Journal-World (2008-06-01).
  29. ^ Harvard University (1986). Harvard University 350th Anniversary Alumni Directory. Vol. vol. I (seventeenth ed.). Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College. p. 904. OCLC 17963336. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
  30. ^ Ochieng, Philip (1 November 2004). "From Home Squared to the US Senate". The East African. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  31. ^ Scott Fornek (9 September 2007). "Barack Obama Sr.: Wrestling with . . . a Ghost". The Chicago Sun Times. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  32. ^ Otieno jarieko. East African Literature Bureau, The Eagle Press, Nairobi, 1959.
  33. ^ Obama, Barak H. (1965). "Problems Facing Our Socialism" (.PDF). East Africa Journal: 26–33. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  34. ^ Dreams from my Father, pp. 214–216
  35. ^ Dreams from My Father, pp. 64–71, 212-219)

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