ANN DUNHAM, BARACK OBAMA’S MOTHER

Barack’s grandparents eloped just before the start of World War II. His grandfather Stanley enlisted in the army, and he and his young wife, Madelyn, moved to an army base, where their daughter, Stanley Ann, was born. After the war, the family moved around, living in California, Kan- sas, and Texas, before relocating to Seattle. Stanley Ann was often teased because of her first name (so named because her father wanted a son), and Madelyn sometimes worried about her, especially when she tended to spend so much time alone. Barack writes in his book Dreams from My Father that his mother was something of a loner, being an only child who had moved around a lot during her youth, but that she was always cheerful

13 and easy-tempered. He said she often had her head in a book and would

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sometimes wander off on a walk. When Madelyn came home from work, she often found Ann alone in the front yard, lying in the grass or on the swing, off in some world of her own. 15

In his book, Barack also writes about racism and how his mother and grandparents were exposed to it while living in Texas. He tells the story of how Ann, at about 10 years old, made friends with a black girl. One af- ternoon, his grandmother came home from work and found Ann and her friend in the front yard, where they were being taunted by other children who stood in the street, yelling and throwing rocks. Realizing how scared the two girls were, she said, “If you two are going to play, then for goodness sake, go on inside.” Madelyn reached for the black girl’s hand, but the girl instead ran out of the yard and down the street. Upon hearing about the incident, Ann’s father was angry, and the next day he visited Ann’s school principal to complain about the other children’s behavior. He also called the parents of the misbehaving children. The responses were all the same: white girls didn’t play with “coloreds in this town.” Whenever his grandfather spoke of racism to his grandson, he would add that he left Texas because of it. His grandmother felt a bit different, saying that racism wasn’t even a part of their vocabulary at the time, adding that they both felt they should treat people decently and that was all there was to it. 16

From Texas, the family moved to Seattle, where Ann graduated from high school. She dreamed of studying at the University of Chicago, but Ann’s father said she was too young to live on her own, and so, in 1959, she moved to Hawaii with her parents and enrolled at the University of Hawaii. In one of her courses, Ann, a shy and awkward 18-year-old, met an African named Barack Obama. He was charming, with an acute intel- lect, and when he was introduced to her parents, they were wary at first but were soon won over. Barack and Ann were married in a civil ceremony. Their son, given the name of his father, was born on August 4, 1961. Ann and Barack Sr. later divorced. She then married Lolo Soetoro, an Indone- sian student at the University of Hawaii. When Barack was six, he moved with his mother and Lolo to Indonesia. They lived in Jakarta, where Lolo worked as a geologist and Ann taught English to Indonesian businessmen at the American embassy as part of the U.S. foreign aid package to devel- oping countries. Barack writes that his mother was grateful for Lolo’s at- tentiveness toward his new stepson and that she guessed he wouldn’t have treated his own son differently. He writes that his mother would picture herself at 24, moving with a child and married to a man whose history and country she knew little about, and that her very innocence was carried to another country right along with her passport.

14 BARACK OBAMA

She expected the new life to be difficult, so she learned all she could about Indonesia, then the fifth most populated country in the world, and its many tribes and dialects. Early on, she realized life was tougher than she thought it would be, in a country with endemic dysentery and fevers and cold-water baths and a hole in the ground instead of a toilet. What had drawn her to Lolo, after Barack Sr. had left her and Barack, was the promise of something new and important and the idea of helping him rebuild a country. She wasn’t prepared, however, for the loneliness she en- countered; her job at the embassy and the money she earned there helped, but they didn’t help the loneliness she felt. 17

Ann concentrated on Barack’s education. There wasn’t enough money to send him to the International School, where most of the foreign children were educated, so she arranged to supplement his Indonesian education with lessons from a correspondence course. Five days a week, beginning at four o’clock in the morning, she would make Barack his breakfast and give him English lessons for three hours before he left for school and she left for work. During these sessions, she also reminded Barack of his heritage. She described his grandparents’ upbringing and his father’s story, how he had grown up poor in a distant poverty-stricken country and how his life had been hard, how he had succeeded, and how he had lived his life according to his principles. She told him he should follow his father’s example, that he had no choice because it was in his genes. She said, “You have me to thank for your eyebrows . . . but your brains, your character, you got from him.” She brought home books on the civil rights movement, recordings of Mahalia Jackson, and the speeches of Martin Luther King. She told Barack stories of the school- children in the South and how, even though they had to read the books discarded by the white children, they became successful doctors and law- yers. Barack learned from his mother that “To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.” 18

The uneasy political situation in Indonesia and near constant loneliness and worry made Ann feel more and more apprehensive about life there. As she learned more about the Indonesian government and the difficult life for many of the Indonesian people, she took some comfort in the fact that, as a white American, she was protected and could leave if she wanted to. Ann also considered what the environment was doing to and for her son, being of mixed heritage, part white and part African. What resulted from all this uneasiness was a distance between Ann and her husband. Lolo had learned to live with those who ran the country and to work within its boundaries. He was able to obtain a new job with an

15 American oil company with the help of his well-connected brother-in-

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law. He moved his family to a better neighborhood, purchased a car and a television, and obtained a membership at a local country club. Although these luxuries made daily life easier, the additional demands of Lolo’s new job caused more difficulties between Ann and Lolo. Despite the difficulties, Ann became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Maya. When Barack was 10, Ann sent him to Hawaii to live with her parents, deciding

he needed to go to an American school. She stayed behind with Maya, promising her young son that she and his sister would soon follow. She separated from Lolo, and a short time later they were divorced. In the article “The Not-So-Simple Story of Barack Obama’s Youth,” which was published in the online edition of the Chicago Tribune, Barack’s half sister Maya Soetoro-Ng said of Barack, their mother, and their grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn (Toots), “Looking back now, I’d say he really is kind of the perfect combination of all of them. All of them were imperfect but all of them loved him fiercely, and I believe he took the best qualities from each of them.” 19

There is no doubt that Barack’s mother and his grandparents were important influences in his life. In his book The Audacity of Hope, Barack writes extensively about family and specifically of his mother and grandmother. They were the ballast in his life, he writes, and it was the women who kept him and his family afloat and kept his world centered. He writes of his mother’s love and clarity of spirit; it was because of her and his grandmother that he never wanted for anything important, and, from them, he understood the values that have always guided him. 20

ANN DUNHAM, BARACK OBAMA’S MOTHER