1961–1966

Hawaii

Barack Obama Jr. is born on August 4, 1961 to Stanley Ann Dunham (1942–1995). Ann Dunham (who understandably dropped her first name Stanley, given to her because her father wanted a male child) had married Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Sr. (1936–1982), on February 2, 1961. Obama, Sr., a pro-Soviet Marxist, was a Kenyan studying at the University of Hawaii. Dunham met him in a Russian language class in the fall of 1960, as he was starting his second year at the university and she was beginning her first. Obama, Sr., an Arab-African Muslim by birth, but an atheist by admission, already had two children with a woman in Kenya named Kezia (b. 1938). The senior Obama may or may not have been legally married to Kezia. Some have speculated that their marriage was only a tribal marriage, and therefore not legally recognized. Depending on his marital status in Kenya, Obama’s marriage to Dunham may not therefore have been legal. (Obama and Kezia eventually reunite after he separates from Ann Dunham, and Kezia bears two more of his children.) After learning of the planned wedding to Dunham, Obama, Sr.’s father writes a long, angry letter to her parents saying he “didn’t approve of the marriage” and “didn’t want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman.” [1, 3, 7, 289, 299, 324, 2287, 2292, 2293]

            Barack Obama, Sr.’s Hawaiian education was sponsored partly by the Laubach Literacy Institute (LLI), which has links to the Nation of Islam, and which considers a socialist world without national borders one of its goals. A financial supporter of the LLI was Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who co-authored books with its founder, Charles Laubach. Kirk was also a friend of civil rights activist and black nationalist Malcolm X (Malcolm Little). It is possible that Malcolm X met Obama, Sr. during a 1959 visit to the Secretary General of the Kenya Federation of Labour, prominent Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, because Mboya and Obama were close friends. [408]

            Obama Sr. was able to attend the University of Hawaii also through the efforts of Mboya, who visited the United States in 1959 to obtain financial support for the American education of 81 Kenyan students. Presidential candidate Obama was incorrect in relating that his father was part of the “Kennedy airlift” of Kenyan students; John F. Kennedy was not sworn in as president until January of 1961, when Obama, Sr. was already in his second year at the University of Hawaii. Obama’s “JFK helped my father” story was likely intended to attach some of the Kennedy mystique to his candidacy. [561]

            Obama states he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. If that is the case, he was then both an American citizen and a British citizen at birth because his father was a citizen of the protectorate of British East Africa. Because the region had, in 1961, not yet declared its independence from Great Britain, Obama was, like his father, a British citizen under Section 32(1) of the British Nationality Act of 1948. Both Obama, Sr. and Obama, Jr. then automatically became citizens of Kenya when that independent nation was formed in 1963. Obama’s British/Kenyan citizenship automatically expired when he turned age 21, but he was born with dual citizenship and split loyalties, and thus was arguably not a natural born citizen of the United States. [219, 258, 492, 549]

Kenya Birth Allegations

Some speculate that Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. Only one of Obama’s parents was American. If Obama was born in Kenya (or any country other than the United States), he cannot legally serve as president of the United States because he is not a “natural born citizen,” even though he may have become a “naturalized citizen.” Obama’s American citizen parent, Ann Dunham, had to have been a resident of the United States for 10 years, at least five of which were over the age of 14. Dunham did not meet that requirement (of the Nationality Act of 1940, revised June 1952) until her 19th birthday in late November of 1961, almost four months after Obama was born. The law confers U.S. nationality on a child born outside the United States only under certain circumstances, including: “(7) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States, who prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years.” Thus, if Obama was born in Kenya he was not only not a natural born citizen, he was not even a citizen of the United States. [801, 2040, 2462]

            A significant and understandable fuss has been made about Obama becoming the first African-American president. Obama is arguably not, however, “African-American.” His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was purportedly one-eighth African from his mother’s side (from the Luo tribe in Kenya) and his father’s ancestry is alleged to be Arabic. To the extent that is true, Obama is “Arab-African-American.” Obama is certainly not—like many black Americans—the descendant of African slaves owned by white American slave owners. There is insufficient publicly available evidence to state with certainty the percentages of Obama’s national ancestries, but if he has Arab ancestors Obama is more likely a descendant of slave owners than slaves because for centuries Arabs traditionally owned slaves and were active slave traders. The names “Barack” and “Hussein” are of Arab origin. “Barack” comes from the Arabic “baraka,” meaning “blessed,” and “baraka” means “blessing” in Kiswahili, a common language in Africa. “Hussein,” from the Arabic “Hussayn,” is a diminutive of “Hassan,” meaning “good” or “handsome;” it is a common Muslim name.  [513, 514, 2624, 2625]

            Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham were granted a divorce on March 20, 1964 and therefore appear to have been legally married—although the State of Hawaii (and Ann Dunham) certainly might not have been told of the existence of Obama, Sr.’s wife Kezia in Kenya when the marriage certificate was issued in 1961. (There are no known witnesses to a Dunham-Obama marriage, nor has any marriage certificate surfaced.) During the campaign Obama’s wife, Michelle stated in an interview that Ann Dunham was “very young and very single when she had him (Barack Obama, Jr.)” In any event, Dunham was unmarried and not even age 18—or possibly just barely 18—when she became pregnant in late 1960. (Michelle Obama may have meant to say that Dunham was “very young and very single” when she became pregnant.) [4, 6, 8, 10, 324, 352, 564, 772, 2287]

Stanley Ann Dunham

Ann Dunham was, at various times, an atheist, an Adlai Stevenson liberal, a secular humanist, leftist social-activist, socialist, and student of cultural anthropology.  She was reportedly an excellent debater at school, and allegedly excelled at defending the concepts of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. [2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 324, 612, 744, 2289]

            Ann Dunham was born on November 29, 1942 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas while her father was serving in the Army. The Dunham family moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma after World War II, later to Vernon, Texas, and then to El Dorado, Kansas. (They may also have lived in California.) In 1955, the Dunham family moved to the Columbia City neighborhood of Seattle, Washington where her father landed a job managing a furniture store—located down the street from the regional headquarters of the Communist Party USA. (It has been rumored that Ann Dunham’s father, Stanley Armour Dunham, purportedly a Marxist, had been suspected of espionage during World War II and that Boeing has a 1944 security file on Dunham in connection with suspected sabotage of B-17 aircraft at its Wichita plant and the theft of B-29 blueprints. Those suspicions, if true, may have prompted Dunham to leave Kansas.) [2, 408, 558, 607, 612, 743, 2289, 2290]

            In Seattle, Ann Dunham attended Eckstein Middle School. The family then moved to Mercer Island in 1956 so she could attend Mercer Island High School. The Mercer Island School Board was led by John Stenhouse (a British immigrant raised in China), who, according to his testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, was a member of the Communist Party USA. Dunham’s teachers included communists Jim Wichterman, whose assignments included the reading of The Communist Manifesto. The hallway between Wichterman’s class and that of another teacher, Val Foubert, whose reading assignments included Margaret Mead’s writings on homosexuality, was known as “anarchy alley.” (Foubert also had his students read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the monumental pro-individual, pro-liberty, anti-collectivist novel that, if she read, Dunham clearly did not understand and which certainly was not allowed to influence her son’s view of the world.) Dunham graduated from high school in 1960. Dunham also attended the East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue (of which communist Stenhouse was president), which was known as the “little Red church on the hill” because of its communist leanings. Obama claims his maternal grandparents were “conservative Methodists or Baptists from Kansas,” and his mother “was a Christian.” Obama also states, “I was not raised in a religious household… My mother’s own experiences… only reinforced this inherited skepticism. Her memories of the Christians who populated her youth were not fond ones…” and “In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church…” Obama may have wanted the voters to believe his Kansas-born mother was just another innocent Dorothy Gayle from the Wizard of Oz (“My mother was a Christian from Kansas”) but she was anything but a traditional middle-American farm girl. [2, 408, 558, 607, 612, 743, 2289, 2290]

            In 1960, Dunham emphasized her free spirit with a statement to her high school friends that, “I don’t need to date or marry to have children.” Teacher Wichterman later recalled that Dunham would question anything, asking, “What’s so good about democracy? What’s so good about capitalism? What’s wrong with communism? What’s good about communism?” Her best friend in high school, Maxine Box, said Dunham “…touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she’d read about and could argue. She was always challenging and arguing and comparing.” [408, 612, 2289]

            Although Dunham hated her first name, she apparently used it for some time. Friend Susan Botkin recalls, “In those days she dealt head-on with her uncommon first name. No sense trying to hide it… ‘My name is Stanley,’ she would say. ‘My father wanted a boy, and that’s that.’ She owned the name. Only once or twice was she teased. She had a sharp tongue, a deep wit, and she could kill. We all called her Stanley.” [2289]

            Dunham was apparently also a free spirit sexually. One former friend said, “She couldn’t be the girl you went steady with, but she could be the one you spent time with.” That friend was not alone in that opinion. Dunham was also known to engage in interracial relationships; friend Susan Blake said that Dunham never dated “the crew-cut white boys.” Other friends state Dunham had no boyfriends while in high school. [564, 614, 2291]

            Shortly after Dunham’s high school graduation in 1960 the family abruptly left Washington and moved to Hawaii, where she reluctantly enrolled at the University of Hawaii. (She had wanted to attend the University of Washington.) Taking his daughter with him to Hawaii was perhaps Stanley Armour Dunham’s way of keeping an eye on her. He may have been reluctant to leave her behind at the University of Washington, after at least one false pregnancy scare. At the University of Hawaii in her freshman year Dunham was described as shy and reluctant to participate in classroom discussions. Out of the classroom, she was friendly with the boys, frequently flirting and repeatedly touching them. Classmates say, “When Dunham arrived in Hawaii, she was a full-fledged radical leftist…” She also stopped using her first name Stanley at that time. [558, 564, 2291]

            Knowing of her sexual reputation, Obama, Sr. supposedly told Dunham, “It’s not mine” when, in December of 1960, she informed him that she was pregnant. Obama, Sr.’s classmates knew he had a wife and children in Africa, but it has to be assumed that Dunham initially did not. She may have quickly found out, however, because Dunham left Obama, Sr. within a few weeks of her son’s birth. [564, 2287]

            Dunham’s acquaintances recall that they often had difficulties knowing when she was telling the truth. One remarked, “She would make you believe anything while you were face-to-face but, a few minutes after she’d leave, you’d realize what she said wasn’t very… realistic or true,” explained one. Another friend recalls joining Dunham for dinner with her parents. Dunham tells an incredible story about a car accident. Her mother, knowing the tale was fabricated, lets her finish… and then states, “That never happened.” [564]

            One Obama birth theory speculates that Dunham’s parents were disturbed by the news of the pregnancy (understandably, considering the scandal an interracial couple and an unwed pregnancy would have prompted in 1961), and likely tried to persuade her to give the child up for adoption and then claim she had miscarried. There is some speculation that Dunham left Hawaii and gave birth to Obama in Washington State (or perhaps British Columbia, Canada) at a facility for unwed mothers—and then decided to keep the baby. She then would have returned to Hawaii and registered the child’s birth there, claiming the child was born at home in Honolulu. (Had Obama been born in Washington State, Dunham would have had no need to later register his birth in Hawaii, but had he been born in Canada her doing so would have been understandable.) In August 1961, Dunham visited a friend in Seattle who had to show Dunham how to change the baby’s diaper. [564, 2655]

            Almost immediately after giving birth to Obama, Dunham returns to Washington State to attend the University of Washington, leaving her infant to be cared for by her mother in Hawaii. Obama, Sr. remains at the University of Hawaii. [408]

            According to the University of Hawaii (UH), Ann Dunham first attended classes at UH on September 26, 1960. Dunham was also a student at UH between the spring of 1963 and summer of 1966, and sporadically at other times between 1972 and 1992. She received a BA in Mathematics in the summer of 1967, an MA in Anthropology in the fall of 1983, and a PhD in Anthropology in the summer of 1992. [408]

            According to the University of Washington (UW), Dunham was enrolled at UW in the fall of 1961 (just weeks after giving birth), the spring of 1962, and the winter of 1962. The Obama campaign places Dunham only in Hawaii until she later moves to Indonesia with Lolo Soetoro, and omits any reference to her attending UW. These university dates indicate that Ann Dunham was not even living with Barack Obama, Sr., because she attended UW while he remained at UH. He spent virtually no time with his newborn son or with Dunham. She attended school in Washington while her mother, Madelyn, took care of her newborn son in Hawaii. Dunham, who had told her friends “I don’t need to date or marry to have children,” apparently also believed she didn’t even need to care for a child to have children. [408]

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.

Obama, Sr. receives two fellowships, one to pursue a doctorate in economics at the New York School for Social Research in New York City, the other for Harvard. The former would have allowed him enough money to provide for his wife and child in New York; the latter would provide only enough for him. He chooses the latter, telling a friend, “How can I refuse the best education?” But Dunham had already left Obama, Sr. shortly after her son’s birth, so it was not illogical for him to choose Harvard over New York. Dunham does not attend the June 1962 graduation of Obama, Sr., and he leaves for Harvard shortly thereafter. Dunham seems not to have demanded any child support, and she receives food stamps for a time. [564, 842 p. 27; 2287]

            After Harvard, Obama, Sr. returns to Kenya with fellow student Ruth Nidesand. He works briefly for the Shell Oil Company, and then obtains employment as an economist with the Kenyan Ministry of Transportation. [2287]

            In 1965, Obama’s father writes an article for the East Africa Journal called “Problems Facing Our Socialism,” in which he criticizes Kenya for not being socialist enough. He writes, “Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 per cent of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.” Obama, Jr. has so far suggested a maximum federal income tax rate of “only” 39.6 per cent (not counting Social Security and Medicare taxes). Obama, Sr. advocated the elimination of private farming in Kenya, the nationalization of businesses, and high taxes on the wealthy for “redistribution.” (Obama, Jr., with the eager assistance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, may very well end up attempting to nationalize America’s banks and its auto, oil, and utility industries.) [271, 1008]

            In his second book (his campaign book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream) Obama clearly states that, like his father, he is also no great fan of the American system of free enterprise capitalism. He describes capitalism as “chaotic and unforgiving,” and says he has a desire to roll back the “ownership society.” [271]

            Obama, Sr. marries Nidesand in Kenya in 1967. They are eventually divorced, with Nidesand claiming physical abuse. With Obama, Sr., Nidesand has a son, a half-brother of Obama, who lives in Shenzhen, China and who reportedly works in the export business; his name is Mark Ndesandjo. (Another son of Nidesand and Obama, Sr., David Ndesandjo, was killed in a motorcycle accident.) Obama, Sr. eventually has at least eight children with four women. (Two of those children are borne by his ex-wife Kezia while Obama, Sr. is still married to Nidesand.) Obama, Sr. does not see his son Barack, Jr. again until 1971, when he visits Hawaii to attend a reunion of former UH classmates. Obama, Sr. is eventually killed in 1982, at age 46, in an automobile accident. Another accident a year earlier left him with both legs amputated. Alcohol is believed to have been a factor in the final, fatal accident. (Close friend Philip Ochieng, a journalist in Kenya, states that Obama, Sr. was “excessively fond of scotch” and ended up in poverty “without a job.”) The earlier automobile accident was, according to at least one source, an apparent attempted hit-and-run assassination in retaliation for Obama having testified against the man who murdered his friend Tom Mboya in 1969. Atheist or not, Obama is given a Muslim burial. [6, 7, 11, 271, 324, 408, 562, 842 p. 22; 2039, 2287, 2682]