Michelle Obama
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American lawyer and writer. She is married to the 44th and current President of the United States, Barack Obama, and is the first African-American First Lady of the United States. Raised on theSouth Side of Chicago, she is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and spent the early part of her legal career working at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met Barack. Subsequently, she worked as part of the staff of Chicago mayorRichard M. Daley, and for the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Throughout 2007 and 2008, Obama helped campaign for her husband's presidential bid. She delivered a keynote address at the2008 Democratic National Convention and spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. She and her husband have two daughters together. She has become a fashion icon and role model for women, and an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating.[1][2]
Obama was born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson on January 17, 1964, in DeYoung, Illinois, to Fraser Robinson III,[3] a city water plant employee and Democratic precinct captain, and Marian (née Shields), a secretary at Spiegel's catalog store.[4] Her mother was a full-time homemaker until Michelle entered high school.[5]
The Robinson and Shields families can trace their roots to pre-Civil War African Americans in the American South.[3] On her father's side she is descended from the Gullah people of South Carolina's Low Country region.[6] Her paternal great-great grandfather, Jim Robinson, was a slave on Friendfield Plantation in South Carolina,[7][8] the state where some of her paternal family still reside.[9][10]Her grandfather Fraser Robinson, Jr. had built his own house in South Carolina, and he and his wife LaVaughn (née Johnson) returned to the Low Country after retirement.[7]
Among Obama's maternal ancestors was her great-great-great-grandmother, Melvinia Shields, a slave on Henry Walls Shields' 200-acre farm in Clayton County, Georgia; he and his children would have worked along with the slaves. Her first son, Dolphus T. Shields, was biracial and born into slavery about 1860. Based on DNA and other evidence, in 2012 researchers said his father was likely 20-year-old Charles Marion Shields, son of her master (Charles later married a white woman and had white children).[11] Melvinia did not talk to relatives about Dolphus' father.[12] Dolphus Shields moved to Birmingham, Alabama after the Civil War, and some of his children migrated to Cleveland, Ohio and Chicago.[11]
All four of Obama's grandparents were multiracial, reflecting the complex history of the U.S., but her extended family said that people did not talk about the era of slavery when they were growing up.[11] Her distant ancestry includes Irish and other European roots.[13] In addition, a paternal first cousin once-removed is the African-American Jewish RabbiCapers Funnye, son of her grandfather's sister.[14][15]
Obama grew up in a two-story bungalow on Euclid Avenue in Chicago's South Shore community area. Her parents rented a small apartment on the house's second floor from her great-aunt, who lived downstairs.[4][16][17][18] She was raised in what she describes as a "conventional" home, with "the mother at home, the father works, you have dinner around the table."[19] Her elementary school was down the street. The family enjoyed playing games such as Monopoly and reading, and frequently saw extended family on both sides.[20]They attended services at nearby South Shore Methodist Church.[16] The Robinsons used to vacation in a rustic cabin in White Cloud, Michigan.[16] She and her 21-month older brother, Craig, skipped the second grade. Her brother is a former basketball coach at Oregon State University and Brown University.[21] By sixth grade, Michelle joined a gifted class at Bryn Mawr Elementary School (later renamed Bouchet Academy).[22]
Obama recalled experiencing gender discrimination in her early years, mentioning that she was opinionated, but people commonly were more inclined to ask what her older brother thought of a given topic.[23]
Education and early career
Obama attended Whitney Young High School,[24] Chicago's first magnet high school, established as a selective enrollment school, where she was a classmate of Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita.[20] The round-trip commute from the Robinsons' South Side home to the Near West Side, where the school was located, took three hours.[25] She was on the honor roll for four years, took advanced placement classes, was a member of the National Honor Society, and served as student council treasurer.[4] She graduated in 1981 as thesalutatorian of her class.[25]
Obama was inspired to follow her brother to Princeton University,[5] where he graduated in 1983. Bond viewed Obama as having become determined from her brother's admission to be admitted herself, Obama understanding Craig and his study habits.[26] Some of Obama's teachers in high school, who were aware of her applying to Princeton, tried to dissuade her, Obama recalling that she had been told she was "setting my sights too high."[27][28] She believed that her brother's alumni status had helped her during the admission process,[29] though there were also talks that her acceptance was due to affirmative action. Whichever the reason was for her acceptance into the school, Obama resolved demonstrate her worthiness of admission.[26] Beginning her freshman year, she feared that she was not as intelligent as her new peers and at first was unable to find her classes nor choose them. Obama admitted she was overwhelmed first arriving at the Ivy League, attributing this to the fact that neither of her parents had graduated from college.[30] By her own admission, she had never spent a prolonged amount of time on a college campus, making the adjustment all the more difficult.[31] The mother of a white roommate of Obama reportedly unsuccessfully tried to get her daughter moved due to Obama's ethnicity. Obama would recall her tenure at Princeton being the first time she was made more aware of her ethnicity and furthered that despite the willingness of her classmates and teachers to want to understand her, she still felt "like a visitor on campus."[32]
At Princeton, she challenged the teaching methodology for French because she felt that it should be more conversational.[33] As part of her requirements for graduation, she wrote a thesis titled Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.[34][35] "I remember being shocked," she says, "by college students who drove BMWs. I didn't even know parents who drove BMWs."[25] Obama researched her thesis by sending a questionnaire to African-American graduates of Princeton, requesting they specify when and how comfortable they were with races prior to their enrollment at Princeton and repeated the same request for how they felt at time they were a student. Of the 400 she sent to, fewer than 90 responded and her findings did not support her hoped conclusion that the alumni would still identity with the African-American community.[36] While at Princeton, she got involved with the Third World Center (now known as the Carl A. Fields Center), an academic and cultural group that supported minority students, running their day care center, which also included after school tutoring.[37] Obama (then known as Robinson) majored in sociology and minored in African American studies; she graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1985.[4][38]
She earned her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1988.[39] By the time she applied for Harvard Law, Bond wrote, her confidence had greatly boasted since applying for Princeton and he furthered, "This time around, there was no doubt in her mind that she had earned her place".[36] Obama's faculty mentor at Harvard Law was Charles Ogletree. Ogletree concluded Obama had answered the question that had plagued her throughout Princeton by the time she arrived at Harvard Law, of whether she would remain the product of her parents or keep the identity she had acquired at Princeton, him viewing her as having answered that she could be "both brilliant and black."[40] At Harvard she participated in demonstrations advocating the hiring of professors who were members of minorities[41] and worked for the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, assisting low-income tenants with housing cases.[42] She is the third First Lady with a postgraduate degree, after her two immediate predecessors, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Laura Bush.[43]Obama would later say her education gave her opportunities beyond what she had ever imagined.[44] In July 2008, Obama accepted the invitation to become an honorary member of the 100-year-old black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, which had no active undergraduate chapter at Princeton when she attended.[45]
Family life
Obama's father Fraser C. Robinson III passed away from complications brought upon him by an illness in 1991. Obama would later admit that although he was the "hole in my heart" and "loss in my scar", the memory of her father has motivated her each day since.[31] Her friend Suzanne Alele died from cancer around this time as well, Obama later tellingKatie Couric that the loss made her think of her contributions toward society and how well she was impacting the world from her law firm. This was seen as a turning point for Michelle.[46]
Michelle met Barack Obama when they were among the few African Americans at their law firm, Sidley Austin (she has sometimes said only two, although others have pointed out there were others in different departments),[47] and she was assigned to mentor him while he was a summer associate.[48] Their relationship started with a business lunch and then a community organization meeting where he first impressed her.[49] The couple's first date was to the Spike Lee movie Do the Right Thing.[50] They married in October 1992,[49]and have two daughters, Malia Ann (born 1998) and Natasha (known as Sasha, born 2001).[51] After his election to the U.S. Senate, the Obama family continued to live on Chicago's South Side, choosing to remain there rather than moving to Washington, D.C. Throughout her husband's 2008 campaign for US President, she made a "commitment to be away overnight only once a week – to campaign only two days a week and be home by the end of the second day" for their two daughters.[52]
Obama once requested that her then-fiancé meet her prospective boss, Valerie Jarrett, when considering her first career move.[19] Jarrett is now one of her husband's closest advisors.[53][54] The marital relationship has had its ebbs and flows; the combination of an evolving family life and beginning political career led to many arguments about balancing work and family. Barack Obama wrote in his second book,The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, that "Tired and stressed, we had little time for conversation, much less romance."[55] However, despite their family obligations and careers, they continued to attempt to schedule date nights while they lived in Chicago.[56]
The Obamas' daughters attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a private school.[57] As a member of the school's board, Michelle fought to maintain diversity in the school when other board members connected with the University of Chicago tried to reserve more slots for children of the university faculty. This resulted in a plan to expand the school.[5] Malia and Sasha now attend Sidwell Friends School in Washington, after also considering Georgetown Day School.[58][59] Michelle stated in an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Showthat they do not intend to have any more children.[60] The Obamas have received advice from past first ladies Laura Bush, Rosalynn Carter and Hillary Rodham Clinton about raising children in the White House.[59] Marian Robinson, Michelle's mother, has moved into the White House to assist with child care.[61]
Religion
Obama is a Protestant Christian. She was raised Methodist and joined the Trinity United Church of Christ, where she and Barack Obama married, performed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. On May 31, 2008, Barack and Michelle Obama announced that they had withdrawn their membership in Trinity United Church of Christ stating that "Our relations with Trinity have been strained by the divisive statements of Reverend Wright, which sharply conflict with our own views."[62]
The Obama family has attended several different Protestant churches since moving to Washington D.C. in 2009, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John's Episcopal Church. At the 49th African Methodist Episcopal Church's general conference, Michelle Obama encouraged the attendees to advocate for political awareness, saying "To anyone who says that church is no place to talk about these issues, you tell them there is no place better – no place better, because ultimately, these are not just political issues – they are moral issues, they're issues that have to do with human dignity and human potential, and the future we want for our kids and our grandkids."[63]
Career
Following law school, Obama was an associate at the Chicago office of the law firm Sidley Austin, where she first met her future husband. At the firm, she worked on marketing and intellectual property.[4] She continues to hold her law license, but as she no longer needs it for her work, it has been on a voluntary inactive status since 1993.[64][65]
In 1991, Obama held public sector positions in the Chicago city government as an Assistant to the Mayor, and as Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development. In 1993, she became Executive Director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit organization encouraging young people to work on social issues in nonprofit groups and government agencies.[24] She worked there nearly four years and set fundraising records for the organization that still stood 12 years after she left.[20]
In 1996, Obama served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago, where she developed the University's Community Service Center.[66] In 2002, she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May 2005, as Vice President for Community and External Affairs.[67] She continued to hold the University of Chicago Hospitals position during the primary campaign, but cut back to part-time in order to spend time with her daughters as well as work for her husband's election;[68] she subsequently took a leave of absence from her job.[69] According to the couple's 2006 income tax return, her salary was $273,618 from the University of Chicago Hospitals, while her husband had a salary of $157,082 from the United States Senate. The Obamas' total income, however, was $991,296, which included $51,200 she earned as a member of the board of directors of TreeHouse Foods, and investments and royalties from his books.[70] Obama reflected that she had never been happier in her life prior to working "to build Public Allies".[71]
Obama served as a salaried board member of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. (NYSE: THS),[72] a major Wal-Mart supplier with which she cut ties immediately after her husband made comments critical of Wal-Mart at an AFL-CIO forum in Trenton, New Jersey, on May 14, 2007.[73] She also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.[74]
Early campaigns
Although Obama has campaigned on her husband's behalf since early in his political career by handshaking and fund-raising, she did not relish the activity at first. When she campaigned during her husband's 2000 run for United States House of Representatives, her boss at the University of Chicago asked if there was any single thing about campaigning that she enjoyed; after some thought, she replied that visiting so many living rooms had given her some new decorating ideas.[75] She reportedly turned down requests by the campaign for her to attend fundraisers.[76] Obama was against her husband's run for the congressional seat and after his defeat would have preferred her husband tending to the financial needs of the family in what she deemed a more practical way.[77]
At first, Obama had reservations about her husband's presidential campaign, due to fears about a possible negative effect on their daughters.[78] She says that she negotiated an agreement in which her husband was to give up smoking in exchange for her support of his decision to run.[79] About her role in her husband's presidential campaign she has said: "My job is not a senior adviser."[53][80][81] During the campaign, she has discussed race and education by using motherhood as a framework.[33]
In May 2007, three months after her husband declared his presidential candidacy, Obama reduced her professional responsibilities by 80 percent to support his presidential campaign.[19] Early in the campaign, she had limited involvement in which she traveled to political events only two days a week and rarely traveled overnight;[82]by early February 2008 her participation had increased significantly, attending thirty-three events in eight days.[54]She made several campaign appearances with Oprah Winfrey.[83][84] She wrote her own stump speeches for her husband's presidential campaign and generally spoke without notes.[25]
Throughout the campaign, some media often labeled Michelle Obama as an "angry black woman,"[85][86][87] and some web sites attempted to propagate this image,[88] prompting her to respond: "Barack and I have been in the public eye for many years now, and we've developed a thick skin along the way. When you're out campaigning, there will always be criticism. I just take it in stride, and at the end of the day, I know that it comes with the territory."[89] By the time of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in August, media outlets observed that her presence on the campaign trail had grown softer than at the start of the race, focusing on soliciting concerns and empathizing with the audience rather than throwing down challenges to them, and giving interviews to shows like The View and publications like Ladies' Home Journal rather than appearing on news programs. The change was even reflected in her fashion choices, wearing more informal clothes in place of her previous designer pieces.[75] The View appearance was partly intended to help soften her public image,[85] and it was widely covered in the press.[90]
The presidential campaign was Obama's first exposure to the national political scene; even before the field of Democratic candidates was narrowed to two, she was considered the least famous of the candidates' spouses.[80] Early in the campaign, she told anecdotes about the Obama family life; however, as the press began to emphasize her sarcasm, she toned it down.[70][79] The New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd wrote:
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