Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.
Born 18 June 1936
Kanyadhiang
Village, Rachuonyo
District, Kenya
Colony[1]
Died 24 November
1982 (aged 46)
Nairobi, Kenya[2]
Resting
place Nyang’oma Kogelo,
Siaya, Kenya[3]
Nationality Kenyan
Ethnicity Luo
Alma mater University of
Hawaii
Harvard University
Occupation Economist
Known for Father of U.S.
President Barack
Obama
Religion Atheist (formerly
Islam)[4]
Partner Kezia Obama
Stanley Ann
Dunham
Ruth Nidesand
Jael Otieno[5][6][7]
Children
Abongo Obama
(b.1958)
Auma Obama
(b.1960)
Barack Obama
(b.1961)
Mark Ndesandjo
(b.1965)[8]
David Ndesandjo
(1968–1987)
Abo Obama
(b.1968)
Bernard Obama
(b.1970)
George Obama
(b.1982)
Parents Hussein Onyango
Obama and Akumu
Habiba[3]
Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.
(/ˈbærək huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/[9]
[10]; 18 June 1936[11][12] − 24
November 1982) was a Kenyan
senior governmental economist
and the father of U.S. President
Barack Obama. He is a central
subject in his son's memoir,
Dreams from My Father.
Early life
Photograph of Barack
Obama, Sr. with his
mother, Akumu
Obama Sr. was born in
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.
[13] His family are members of
the Luo ethnic group. His father
was Hussein Onyango Obama (c.
1895-1979) and his mother was
Habiba Akumu Nyanjango of
Karabondi, Kenya, Onyango's
second wife. However, Obama Sr.
was raised by his stepmother,
Sarah Ogwel of Kogelo, after
Akumu left her family and
separated from her husband in
1945.[3][14]
Before working as a cook for
missionaries in Nairobi, Obama
Sr.'s father Onyango had traveled
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. 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.
[15] Obama Sr. was born into this
Muslim and Christian family,[16]
but he became an atheist as a
young man, before meeting Ann
Dunham.[4]
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.[17] The head teacher, B.L.
Bowers, described Obama Sr. in
his records as "very keen, steady,
trustworthy and friendly.
Concentrates, reliable and out-
going."[18] In 1954, after
attending the Maseno National
School, Obama Sr. was married for
the first time at the age of
eighteen, to Kezia Aoko[19] in a
tribal ceremony. They had two
children, Malik (a.k.a. Roy) and
Auma, during the early years of
their marriage. Later, while
Obama Sr. was married to his
third wife, Kezia had Abo and
Bernard, thought to be with
Obama Sr.,[20] but in Dreams
from My Father, it is stated that
the Obama family questions
whether Abo and Bernard are his
biological sons.[21]
In 1959, Obama Sr. received a
scholarship in economics through
a program organized by
nationalist leader Tom Mboya. The
program offered Western
educational opportunities to
outstanding Kenyan students.
[22][23][24] 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. Funds provided the
following year by John F.
Kennedy's family paid off old
debts of the project and
subsidized student stipends,
thereby indirectly benefiting
Obama Sr. and other members of
the 1959 group of scholarship
holders. During the 2008
presidential campaign, his son
misspoke, saying that the
Kennedys organized the initial
1959 student airlift, an error
subsequently acknowledged by a
campaign spokesman.[22] When
Obama Sr. left for America, he left
behind his baby son, Roy, and his
young wife, Kezia, who was
pregnant with their daughter,
Auma.[25]
University of Hawaii
In September 1959, Obama Sr.
enrolled at the University of
Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu as
the university's first African
foreign student.[26] He initially
lived across the street from the
university at the Charles H.
Atherton branch of the YMCA at
1810 University Avenue;[26]
public records from 1961 indicate
he later had a residence two miles
southeast of the university at
625 11th Avenue in the Kaimuki
neighborhood.[27] In September
1960, Obama Sr. met Stanley Ann
Dunham in a basic Russian
language course at the University
of Hawaii.[26] Dunham dropped
out of the University of Hawaii
after the fall 1960 semester after
becoming pregnant, while Obama
Sr. continued his education.[28]
Obama Sr. married Dunham in
Wailuku on the Hawaiian island of
Maui on 2 February 1961.[28][29]
He eventually told Dunham about
his previous marriage in Kenya,
but said he was divorced—which
she found out years later was a
lie.[26]
Obama Sr. and Dunham's son,
Barack II, was born in Honolulu on
4 August 1961 at the old
Kapiolani Maternity and
Gynecological Hospital—a
predecessor of the Kapi'olani
Medical Center for Women and
Children.[26] 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.[27] Soon after his birth,
Dunham took her son to Seattle,
Washington, where she took
classes at the University of
Washington from September
1961 to June 1962.[30] Obama Sr.
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.[31][32] He
graduated from the University of
Hawaii after three years with a
B.A. in economics[33] and was
elected to Phi Beta Kappa[34] and
left Hawaii in June 1962.[2][26]
Harvard University
In September 1962, after a tour
of mainland U.S. universities,
Obama Sr. traveled to Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where he began a
graduate fellowship in economics
at Harvard University and rented
an apartment in a rooming house
near Central Square in Cambridge.
[24][35] Meanwhile, Dunham and
her son returned to Honolulu in
the latter half of 1962, and she
resumed her undergraduate
education in January 1963 with
the spring semester at the
University of Hawaii.[30] In
January 1964, Dunham filed for
divorce in Honolulu; the divorce
was not contested by Obama Sr.
[28][36] In 1965, Dunham married
Lolo Soetoro,[37] a Javanese[38]
surveyor whom she had met at
the East-West Center.[39] Obama,
Sr. was forced to leave his Ph.D.
program at Harvard University in
May 1964 (and received an A.M. in
economics from Harvard in 1965).
[2][24][29][40][41] In June 1964,
Obama Sr. 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.
[42][43][44]
Return to Kenya
Obama Sr. returned to his native
Kenya in August 1964.[45] Ruth
followed Obama Sr. back to
Kenya, where she married him on
December 24, 1964,[46] and had
two sons with him, Mark Okoth
Obama in 1965 and David Opiyo
Obama in 1968.[47] Ruth and
Obama Sr. separated in 1971,[48]
[49] and divorced in 1973.[2][24]
Ruth subsequently married a
Tanzanian named Ndesandjo and
took his surname, as did her sons
Mark and David. Mark said in 2009
that Obama Sr. had been abusive
to him, to his late brother, David,
and to his mother.[20][43][44]
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.[50] 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.)[51][52] That same year,
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."[53] In
December 1971, Obama Sr., who
was recuperating after an almost
year-long hospitalization
following an automobile accident,
[54] made a month-long trip to
Hawaii, during which he visited
with his ex-wife and son. The
visit was the last time 10-year-
old Barack II would see his father.
[55] On that trip Obama Sr. took
his son to his first jazz concert, a
performance by pianist Dave
Brubeck.[56]
As his son described it in his
memoir, conflict with President
Jomo Kenyatta destroyed Obama
Sr.'s career.[57] The decline began
after Tom Mboya's assassination
in 1969. Obama Sr. was fired
from his job by 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.
[58] Obama Sr.'s life fell into
drinking and poverty, from
which he never recovered. His
friend, journalist Philip Ochieng,
has described Obama Sr.'s
difficult personality and drinking
problems in the Kenya
newspaper the Daily Nation.[22]
Obama Sr. later lost both legs in
another automobile collision and
subsequently lost his job. He
fathered another son named
George. Six months after his son's
birth, Obama Sr. died in a third car
crash in Nairobi in 1982.[22] He
was 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]