Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the father of U.S.
President Barack Obama. He is a central figure of his son's memoir, Dreams from My Father.
Obama married in 1954 and had two children with his first wife, Kezia. He was selected
for a special program to attend college in the United States, where he went to the University
of Hawaii. There, Obama met Stanley Ann Dunham, whom he married in 1961 and divorced three
years later, after having a son, Barack II, named after him. The elder Obama later went
to Harvard University for graduate school, where he earned an M.A. in economics, and
returned to Kenya in 1964. Later that year, Obama married Ruth Beatrice
Baker, a Jewish American woman with whom he had developed a relationship in Massachusetts.
They had two sons together before separating in 1971 and divorcing in 1973. Obama first
worked for an oil company, before beginning work as an economist with the Kenyan Ministry
of Transport. He gained a promotion to senior economic analyst in the Ministry of Finance.
Among a cadre of young Kenyan men educated in the West in a program supported by Tom
Mboya, Obama had conflicts with Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta, which adversely affected his
career. He was fired and blacklisted in Kenya, finding it nearly impossible to get a job.
Obama experienced three serious car accidents during his final years, the last of which
claimed his life in 1982.
Early life Barack Obama was born in Rachuonyo District
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. His family are members of the Luo ethnic group.
His father was Onyango Obama, and he married Habiba Akumu Nyanjango of Karabondi, Kenya,
as his second wife. They had two daughters and a son together, Barack Obama. After Akumu
separated from her husband Hussein and left the family in 1945, the three children were
raised by his father's third wife, Sarah Ogwel of Kogelo.
As a young man, Barack Obama's father Onyango had traveled widely, enlisting in the British
colonial forces and visiting Europe, India, and Zanzibar. There, Onyango converted from
Roman Catholicism to Islam and took the name Hussein. He became a cook for missionaries
and local herbalist in Nairobi. The Times of London reports that in 1949,
after becoming more politically active, Onyango was jailed by the British for six months due
to his working for the Kenyan independence movement. According to Sarah Onyango Obama,
her husband Hussein Onyango was subjected to beatings and abuse; it resulted in permanent
physical disabilities and his loathing of the British. David Maraniss' 2012 biography
of President Barack Obama states that Onyango did not participate in the insurrections;
nor was he ever imprisoned by the British during the uprising. He continued to be trusted
by white Kenyans. Obama was raised in a Muslim family. When he was about six years old and
attending a Christian missionary school, the boy converted to Anglicanism when strongly
encouraged by the staff. He changed his name from "Baraka" to "Barack".
While still living near Kendu Bay, Obama attended Gendia Primary School. After his family moved
to Siaya District, he transferred to Ng’iya Intermediate School. From 1950 to 1953, he
studied at Maseno National School, an exclusive Anglican boarding school in Maseno. The head
teacher, B.L. Bowers, described Obama in his records as "very keen, steady, trustworthy
and friendly. Concentrates, reliable and out-going." Marriages and family
In 1954 at age 18, Obama married Kezia Aoko in a tribal ceremony. They had two children,
Malik and Auma, during the early years of their marriage.
He took two more wives. In 1960 while studying at the University of Hawai'i on a special
program, he met and dated Stanley Dunham, an American woman. She became pregnant and
they married in early 1961; their son Barack II was born in August 1961. They later separated
and divorced. Obama went to Harvard University for a doctoral
program in economics, but left the university with a master's degree. At Harvard he started
dating Ruth Beatrice Baker, a Jewish American woman. She went with him to Kenya in 1964.
They married late that year and had two sons, Mark and David. The couple separated in 1971
and divorced. In Kenya, Obama reconnected with his first
wife Kezia, and she had two sons after his return, Abo and Bernard, believed to be his
children. It was still acceptable for successful men in Kenya to take multiple wives.
Barack Obama, Jr, in his memoir, Dreams from My Father, said that his father's family has
questioned whether Abo and Bernard are Barack Sr.'s biological sons.
The senior Obama fathered his last son George in 1982 with Jael Otinyo. The boy was about
six months old when Obama was killed in a car accident. He was reared by his mother,
who later remarried; his stepfather cared for him as well.
College and graduate school In 1959, the Kenyan Department of Education
published Obama's monograph, entitled Otieno jarieko. Kitabu mar ariyo. 2: Yore mabeyo
mag puro puothe. Due to his accomplishments, in 1959 Obama
received a scholarship in economics through a program organized by the nationalist leader
Tom Mboya. The program offered education in the West to outstanding Kenyan students. 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's early years in the United States. Kirk and her literacy associate Helen M. Roberts
of Palo Alto raised the money necessary for Obama to travel to America. Funds provided
the next year by Senator John F. Kennedy's family paid off old debts of the project and
subsidized student stipends, indirectly benefiting Obama and other members of the 1959 group
of scholarship holders. When Obama left for America, he left behind his young wife, Kezia,
and their baby son Malik. Kezia was pregnant, and their daughter Auma was born while her
father was in Hawaii. At Obama's request, Helen Roberts committed to watching over and
financially supporting the family that he had left behind, for as long as she remained
in Nairobi. University of Hawaii
In 1959, Obama enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu as the university's
first African foreign student. He initially lived across the street from the university
at the Charles H. Atherton branch of the YMCA at 1810 University Avenue; public records
from 1961 indicate he later had a residence two miles southeast of the university at 625
11th Avenue in the Kaimuki neighborhood. In 1960, Obama met Stanley Ann Dunham in a
basic Russian language course at the University of Hawaii and they started dating. After becoming
pregnant, Dunham dropped out of the University of Hawaii after the fall 1960 semester, while
Obama continued his education. Obama married Dunham in Wailuku on the Hawaiian island of
Maui on 2 February 1961. He eventually told Dunham about his previous marriage in Kenya,
but said he was divorced—which she found out years later was untrue.
Their son Barack Obama II, was born in Honolulu on 4 August 1961 at the former Kapiolani Maternity
and Gynecological Hospital. His birth was announced in The Honolulu Advertiser and the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, with his parents' address listed as 6085 Kalanianaole Highway
in the Kuliouou neighborhood of Honolulu, seven miles east of the university—the rented
home of Dunham's parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. Soon after his birth, Dunham took
the infant with her to Seattle, Washington, where she took classes at the University of
Washington from September 1961 to June 1962. Obama continued his education at the University
of Hawaii and in 1961–1962 lived one mile east of the university in the St. Louis Heights
neighborhood. He graduated from the University of Hawaii after three years with a B.A. in
economics and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He left Hawaii in June 1962.
Harvard University In September 1962, after a tour of mainland
U.S. universities, Obama traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he began a graduate fellowship
in economics at Harvard University. He rented an apartment in a rooming house near Central
Square in Cambridge. Meanwhile, Dunham and their son returned to Honolulu in the latter
half of 1962, and she resumed her undergraduate education in January 1963 in the spring semester
at the University of Hawaii. In January 1964, Dunham filed for divorce in Honolulu; the
divorce was not contested by Obama. In 1965, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, a Javanese surveyor
whom she had met at the East-West Center. Obama was forced to leave his Ph.D. program
at Harvard University in May 1964. In June 1964, Obama met and began dating a 27-year-old
Jewish American elementary school teacher named Ruth Beatrice Baker, the daughter of
prosperous Lithuanian immigrants to the United States.
Return to Kenya Third marriage
Obama returned to Kenya in 1964 after graduating from Harvard. Baker followed him, and they
married 24 December 1964. They had two sons together, Mark Okoth Obama in 1965 and David
Opiyo Obama in 1968. Baker and Obama separated in 1971, and divorced in 1973. Baker subsequently
married a Tanzanian named Ndesandjo and took his surname, as did her sons Mark and David.
Mark said in 2009 that Obama had been abusive to him, his late brother David, and his mother.
Economics career Obama first worked as an economist for an
oil company in Kenya. In 1965, Obama published a paper entitled "Problems Facing Our Socialism"
in the East Africa Journal, harshly criticizing the blueprint for national planning, "African
Socialism and Its Applicability to Planning in Kenya", developed by President Tom Mboya's
Ministry of Economic Planning and Development. Obama served as an economist in the Kenyan
Ministry of Transport. Later he was promoted to senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry
of Finance. In 1970, Obama was in a serious automobile
accident, and was hospitalized for nearly a year. In December 1971, he traveled to Hawai'i
for a month. There he visited with his ex-wife Ann Dunham and American son Barack II. The
visit was the major and last time the boy would see his father. During his trip, Obama
took his son to his first jazz concert, a performance by the pianist Dave Brubeck.
His son recalled Obama giving him his first basketball:
"I only remember my father for one month my whole life, when I was 10. And it wasn't until
much later in life that I realized, like, he gave me my first basketball and it was
shortly thereafter that I became this basketball fanatic. And he took me to my first jazz concert
and it was sort of shortly thereafter that I became really interested in jazz and music.
So what it makes you realize how much of an impact [even if it's only a month] that they
have on you. But I think probably the most important thing was his absence I think contributed
to me really wanting to be a good dad, you know? Because I think not having him there
made me say to myself 'you know what I want to make sure my girls feel like they've got
somebody they can rely on.'"
According to Barack II's memoir, Obama continuing conflict with Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta
destroyed his career. He came under suspicion after Tom Mboya was assassinated in 1969,
as Obama had been a protege of his. Kenyatta fired Obama; the economist was blacklisted
in Kenya and found it impossible to get work. By the time Obama visited his son in Hawaii
in 1971, he had a bad leg from the 1970 accident. Obama later lost both legs in a second serious
automobile accident, and subsequently lost his job. His life deteriorated as he struggled
with poverty and drinking. He never recovered his former standing during his last decade.
His friend Philip Ochieng, a journalist of the Kenya newspaper, Daily Nation, has described
Obama's difficult personality and drinking problems. In 1982, Obama had a relationship
with Jael Otinyo and with her fathered his last son, named George Obama.
Six months after George's birth, Obama died in a car crash in Nairobi. He was interred
in his native village of Nyang'oma Kogelo, Siaya District. His funeral was attended by
ministers Robert Ouko, Peter Oloo-Aringo, and other prominent political figures.
Publications Otieno jarieko. Nairobi: East African Literature
Bureau, Eagle Press. 1959. OCLC 694566336. "Problems facing our socialism: another critique
of Sessional Paper No. 10". East Africa Journal 2: 26–33. July 1965. ISSN 0012-8309. Retrieved
6 May 2011. See also
Family of Barack Obama Notes
References