Ann Dunham

Stanley Ann Dunham

Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960
Born Stanley Ann Dunham
November 29, 1942(1942-11-29)
Wichita, Kansas, USA
Died November 7, 1995(1995-11-07) (aged 52)
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Cause of death Uterine cancer
Resting place Pacific Ocean
   at Koko Head, Oahu
Nationality American
Ethnicity White English
Education

BA, MA, PhD

[1]
Alma mater University of Hawaii
Occupation Anthropologist
Known for Mother of U.S. President Barack Obama
Home town Wichita, Kansas
Spouse Barack Obama, Sr.
   (1961–1964)
Lolo Soetoro
   (1965–1980)
Children Barack Obama (b.1961)
Maya Soetoro (b.1970)
Parents Stanley Armour Dunham
Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham

Stanley Ann Dunham (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995), the mother of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, was an American anthropologist who specialized in economic anthropology and rural development. Dunham was nicknamed Anna,[2][3] later known as Dr. Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro,[1] and finally Ann Dunham Sutoro.[1] Born in Kansas, Dunham spent her childhood in California, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas and her teenage years in Mercer Island, Washington, and much of her adult life in Hawaii and Indonesia.

Dunham studied at the University of Hawaii and the East-West Center and attained a bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. in anthropology. Interested in craftsmanship, weaving and the role of women in cottage industries, Dunham's research focused on women's work on the island of Java and blacksmithing in Indonesia. To address the problem of poverty in rural villages, she created microcredit programs while working as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development. Dunham was also employed by the Ford Foundation in Jakarta and she consulted with the Asian Development Bank in Pakistan. Towards the latter part of her life, she worked with Bank Rakyat Indonesia, where she helped apply her research to the largest microfinance program in the world.[4]

After her son assumed the presidency, interest renewed in Dunham's work: The University of Hawaii held a symposium about her research; an exhibition of Dunham's Indonesian batik textile collection toured the United States; and in December 2009, Duke University Press published Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, a book based on Dunham's original 1992 dissertation.

In an interview, Barack Obama referred to his mother as "the dominant figure in my formative years... The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."[5]

Contents

Early life

Dunham was born in St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, Kansas[6] as the only child of Madelyn Lee Payne and Stanley Armour Dunham.[7][8] Her parents were born in Kansas and met in Wichita where they married on May 5, 1940.[9] After the attack on Pearl Harbor, her father joined the United States Army and her mother worked at a Boeing plant in Wichita.[10] Named after her father because he wanted a son, as a child and teenager she was known as "Stanley". Other children teased her about her name but she used it through high school, "apologizing for it each time she introduced herself in a new town".[1] By the time Dunham had begun attending college, she was known by her middle name "Ann" instead.[1] After World War II, Dunham's father moved the family from Wichita to California while her father attended the University of California, Berkeley. In 1948, Dunham and her parents moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma, and from there to Vernon, Texas, and then to El Dorado, Kansas.[11] In 1955, the family moved to Seattle, Washington where her father was employed as a furniture salesman and her mother worked as vice president of a bank. They lived in an apartment complex in the Wedgwood neighborhood where she attended Nathan Eckstein Junior High School.[12]

In 1956, Dunham's family moved to Mercer Island, an Eastside suburb of Seattle. Dunham's parents wanted their 13-year-old daughter to attend the newly opened Mercer Island High School.[5] At the school, teachers Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman taught the importance of challenging social norms and questioning authority to the young Dunham, and she took the lessons to heart: "She felt she didn't need to date or marry or have children." One classmate remembered her as "intellectually way more mature than we were and a little bit ahead of her time, in an off-center way,"[5] and a high school friend described her as knowledgeable and progressive: "If you were concerned about something going wrong in the world, Stanley would know about it first. We were liberals before we knew what liberals were." Another called her "the original feminist".[5]

Family life and marriages

For more details on this topic, see Family of Barack Obama.
Stanley Armour Dunham, Ann Dunham, Maya Soetoro and Barack Obama, mid 1970s (l to r)

On August 21, 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state to be admitted into the Union. Dunham's parents sought business opportunities in the new state, and after graduating from high school in 1960, Dunham and her family moved to Hawaii. Dunham soon enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. While attending a Russian language class, Dunham met Barack Obama, Sr., the school's first African student.[13][14] At the age of 23, Obama had come to Hawaii to pursue his education, leaving behind a pregnant wife and infant son in his home town of Nyang’oma Kogelo in Kenya. Dunham and Obama were married on the Hawaiian island of Maui on February 2, 1961, despite parental opposition from both families.[5][15] Dunham was three months pregnant at the time of her marriage.[1][5] Obama Sr. eventually informed Dunham about his first marriage in Kenya but claimed he was divorced. Years later, she would discover this was false.[14] Obama Sr.'s first wife, Kezia, later said she had granted her consent for him to marry a second wife, in keeping with Luo customs.[16]

On August 4, 1961, at the age of 18, Dunham gave birth to her first child, Barack Obama II.[17] Friends in Washington State recall her visiting with her month-old baby in 1961.[18][19][20][21][22] By January 1962, she had enrolled at the University of Washington, and was living as a single mother in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle with her son while her husband continued his studies in Hawaii.[12][19][23][24][25] When Obama Sr. graduated from the University of Hawaii in June 1962, he was offered a scholarship to study in New York City[26] but he declined it, preferring to attend the more prestigious Harvard University.[15] He left for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would begin graduate study at Harvard in the fall of 1962.[14] Dunham filed for divorce in Honolulu in January 1964. Obama Sr. did not contest, and the divorce was granted.[1] Dunham returned to the university to study anthropology. During this time, her parents helped her raise the young Obama. Dunham graduated from the University of Hawaii in 1967 with a bachelor's degree.[1] Obama Sr. received a Masters degree (MA) in economics from Harvard in 1965[27] and in 1971, he came to Hawaii and visited his son Barack, then 10 years old; it was the last time he would see his son. In 1982, Obama Sr. was killed in a car accident.

Ann Dunham in 1971, with her husband Lolo and her children Maya and Barack.

It was at the East-West Center that Dunham met Lolo Soetoro, a student from Indonesia.[28] They married March 15, 1965 [29] and moved with six-year-old Barack to Jakarta, Indonesia, just after the unrest surrounding the ascent of Suharto.[30] In Indonesia, Soetoro worked as a government relations consultant with the American petroleum company Mobil.[31][32] On August 15, 1970, Soetoro and Dunham had a daughter, Maya Kassandra Soetoro.[9] In Indonesia, Dunham enriched her son's education with correspondence courses in English, recordings of Mahalia Jackson, and speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. She sent the young Obama back to Hawaii to attend Punahou School rather than having him stay in Asia with her.[30] Madelyn Dunham's job as a vice-president at the Bank of Hawaii helped pay the steep tuition,[33] with some assistance from a scholarship.[34] In the 1970s, Dunham wished to return to work, but Soetoro wanted more children. She once said that he became more American as she became more Javanese.[30] Dunham left Soetoro in 1972, returning to Hawaii and reuniting with her son Barack for several years. Soetoro and Dunham saw each other periodically in the 1970s when Dunham returned to Indonesia for her field work[30] but did not live together again. They divorced in 1980 and she began using the name Ann Dunham Sutoro, with a modern spelling of her former husband's surname.[1]

Dunham was not estranged from either ex-husband and encouraged her children to feel connected to their fathers.[35]

Professional life

Dunham returned to graduate school in Honolulu in 1974, while raising Barack and Maya. When Dunham returned to Indonesia for field work in 1975 with Maya, after three years in Honolulu, Barack chose not to go, preferring to finish high school in Hawaii while living with his grandparents.[30]

As a weaver herself, Dunham was interested in village industries, and she moved to Yogyakarta, the center of Javanese handicrafts.[36]

In 1992 she earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii, under the supervision of Prof. Alice Dewey, with a dissertation titled Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving and thriving against all odds.[37] Anthropologist Michael Dove described the dissertation as "a classic, in-depth, on-the-ground anthropological study of a 1,200-year-old industry".[38] Dunham's paper challenged popular perceptions regarding economically and politically marginalized groups, and countered the notions that the roots of poverty lie with the poor themselves and that cultural differences are responsible for the gap between less-developed countries and the industrialized West.

According to Dove, Dunham found that the villagers she studied in Central Java had many of the same economic needs, beliefs and aspirations as the most capitalist of Westerners. Village craftsmen were "keenly interested in profits," she wrote, and entrepreneurship was “in plentiful supply in rural Indonesia,” having been “part of the traditional culture” there for a millennium…Based on these observations, Dr. Soetoro concluded that underdevelopment in these communities resulted from a scarcity of capital, the allocation of which was a matter of politics, not culture. Antipoverty programs that ignored this reality had the perverse potential for exacerbating inequality because they would only reinforce the power of elites. As she wrote in her dissertation, "many government programs inadvertently foster stratification by channeling resources through village officials," who then used the money to strengthen their own status further.[38]

Dunham then had a career in rural development championing women’s work and microcredit for the world’s poor, with Indonesia’s oldest bank, the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, Women's World Banking, and as a consultant in Lahore, Pakistan. While at the Ford Foundation she developed a model of microfinance which is now the standard in Indonesia, a country that is a world leader in micro-credit systems.[39] Peter Geithner, father of Tim Geithner (who later became United States Secretary of the Treasury in her son's administration), was head of the foundation's Asia grant-making at that time.[40]Dunham also worked with leaders from organizations supporting Indonesian human rights, women's rights, and grass-roots development.[30]

Illness and death

In late 1994, Dunham was living and working in Indonesia. One night, during dinner at a friend's house in Jakarta, she experienced stomach pain. A visit to a local physician led to an initial diagnosis of indigestion.[1] Dunham returned to the United States in early 1995 and was examined at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and diagnosed with uterine cancer. By this time, the cancer had spread to her ovaries.[14] She moved back to Hawaii to live near her widowed mother and died on November 7, 1995, at the age of 52.[30][41][42] Following a memorial service at the University of Hawaii, Obama and his sister spread their mother's ashes in the Pacific Ocean at Lanai Lookout on the south side of Oahu.[30] Obama scattered the ashes of his grandmother (Madelyn Dunham) in the same spot on December 23, 2008, weeks after his election to the presidency.[43]

Obama touched upon his mother's death in a 30-second campaign advertisement ("Mother") arguing for health care reform. The ad featured a photograph of Dunham holding a young Obama in her arms as Obama talks about Dunham's last days worrying about expensive medical bills.[42] The topic also came up in a 2007 speech in Santa Barbara:[42]

I remember my mother. She was 52 years old when she died of ovarian cancer, and you know what she was thinking about in the last months of her life? She wasn’t thinking about getting well. She wasn't thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality. She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn’t sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a preexisting condition. I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So, I have seen what it's like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health care system. And it's wrong. It's not who we are as a people.[42]

Posthumous interest

A revised version of Dunham's 1992 dissertation was published by Duke University Press in 2009

In September 2008, the University of Hawaii at Mānoa held a symposium about Dunham.[44] In December 2009, Duke University Press published a version of Dunham's dissertation titled Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia. The book was revised and edited by Dunham's graduate advisor, Alice G. Dewey, and Nancy I. Cooper. Her daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, wrote the foreword for the book. In his afterword, Boston University anthropologist Robert W. Hefner describes Dunham's research as "prescient" and her legacy as "relevant today for anthropology, Indonesian studies, and engaged scholarship".[45] The book was launched at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia with a special Presidential Panel on Dunham's work; The 2009 meeting was taped by C-SPAN.[46]

In 2009, an exhibition of Dunham's Javanese batik textile collection (A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth: Barack Obama's Mother and Indonesian Batiks) toured six museums in the United States, finishing the tour at the Textile Museum of Washington, D.C. in August.[47] Early in her life, Dunham explored her interest in the textile arts as a weaver, creating wall hangings for her own enjoyment. After moving to Indonesia, she was attracted to the striking textile art of the batik and began to collect a variety of different fabrics.[48]

Ann Dunham: A Most Generous Spirit, a feature documentary depicting Dunham's life, is scheduled to begin production in 2010. Charles Burnett, writer and director of Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation (2007) will direct the film. Shooting will take place on location in Indonesia, Hawaii and Washington. The production team is currently negotiating for the participation of President Barack Obama.[49]

Personal beliefs

In his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father Barack Obama wrote, "My mother's confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn't possess... In a land [Indonesia] where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardship... she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism."[50] In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope Obama wrote, "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 yet for all her professed secularism, my mother was in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I've ever known."[51] "Religion for her was "just one of the many ways — and not necessarily the best way — that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives," Obama wrote.[52]

"She felt that somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core. That was very much her philosophy of life — to not be limited by fear or narrow definitions, to not build walls around ourselves and to do our best to find kinship and beauty in unexpected places."

Maya Soetoro-Ng[30]

Maxine Box, Dunham's best friend in high school, said that Dunham "touted herself [then] as an atheist, and it was something she'd read about and could argue. She was always challenging and arguing and comparing. She was already thinking about things that the rest of us hadn't."[5] However, Dunham's daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, when asked later if her mother was an atheist, said, "I wouldn't have called her an atheist. She was an agnostic. She basically gave us all the good books — the Bible, the Hindu Upanishads and the Buddhist scripture, the Tao Te Ching, Sun Tzu — and wanted us to recognize that everyone has something beautiful to contribute."[28] "Jesus, she felt, was a wonderful example. But she felt that a lot of Christians behaved in un-Christian ways."[52]

In a 2007 speech, Obama contrasted the beliefs of his mother to those of her parents, and commented on her spirituality and skepticism: "My mother, whose parents were nonpracticing Baptists and Methodists, was one of the most spiritual souls I ever knew. But she had a healthy skepticism of religion as an institution."[1]

Obama also described his own beliefs in relation to the religious upbringing of his mother and father:

My father was from Kenya and a lot of people in his village were Muslim. He didn’t practice Islam. Truth is he wasn’t very religious. He met my mother. My mother was a Christian from Kansas, and they married and then divorced. I was raised by my mother. So, I’ve always been a Christian. The only connection I’ve had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from that country. But I’ve never practiced Islam.[53]

Publications

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Ripley, Amanda; Zamira Loebis and Jason Tedjasukmana (2008-04-21). "A Mother's Story". Time (Time Inc.) 171 (16): 36–42. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1729524,00.html. Retrieved 2009-08-27. 
  2. ↑ Obama, Barack (2004) [1995]. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press. pp. 7,68. ISBN 1400082773. 
  3. ↑ Turow, Scott (2004-03-30). "The new face of the Democratic Party -- and America". Salon.com. http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/03/30/obama/index.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13. 
  4. ↑ Dewey, Alice; Geoffrey White (2008). "Ann Dunham: A Personal Reflection". Anthropology News (American Anthropological Association) 49 (8): 20. doi:10.1111/an.2008.49.8.20. http://www.anthropology.hawaii.edu/News/Announcements/2008/dunham.html. Retrieved 2009-08-23.  "Spotlight on Alumni: EWC Alumna Ann Dunham— Mother to President Obama and Champion of Women’s Rights and Economic Justice". News. East-West Center. http://www.eastwestcenter.org/news-center/web-articles/spotlight-on-alumni-ewc-alumna-ann-dunham-mother-to-president-obama-and-champion-of-womens-rights-and-economic-justice/. Retrieved 2009-08-19. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Jones, Tim (2007-03-27). "Barack Obama: Mother not just a girl from Kansas; Stanley Ann Dunham shaped a future senator". Chicago Tribune: p. 1 (Tempo). http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-0703270151mar27-archive,0,5853572,full.story. Retrieved 2009-02-16. 
    . (2007-03-27). "Video: Reflections on Obama's mother (02:34)". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/video/?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=1323174. Retrieved 2009-02-16. 
    . (2007-03-27). "Video: Jim Wichterman reflects on his former student (02:03)". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/video/?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=1323768. Retrieved 2009-02-16. 
    . (2007-03-27). "Video: She changed his diapers (01:02)". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/video/?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=1323682. Retrieved 2009-02-16. 
  6. ↑ Peters, Susan (2009-01-27). "President Obama: From Kansas to the Capital, Part II". KAKE-TV, ABC News. http://www.videosurf.com/video/obama-kansas-to-the-capital-part-ii-58173163. Retrieved 2009-09-12. 
  7. ↑ "Partial Ancestor Table: President Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.". New England Historic Genealogical Society. http://www.newenglandancestors.org/pdfs/obama_ancestral_table.pdf. Retrieved 2009-06-11. 
  8. ↑ Peters, Susan (2009-01-27). "President Obama: From Kansas to the Capital". KAKE-TV, ABC News. http://www.kake.com/home/misc/38157259.html. Retrieved 2009-07-29. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Fornek, Scott; Good, Greg (2007-09-09). "The Obama family tree". Chicago Sun-Times: p. 2B. http://www.suntimes.com/images/cds/MP3/obamatree.pdf. Retrieved 2009-02-13. 
  10. ↑ Nakaso, Dan (2008-11-04). "Barack Obama's grandma, 86, dies of cancer before election". The Honolulu Advertiser. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Nov/04/ln/hawaii811040331.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13. 
    Nakaso, Dan (2008-11-11). "Day, time of Dunham death clarified". The Honolulu Advertiser. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Nov/11/ln/hawaii811110356.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13. 
  11. ↑ "Obama's Grandparents And Mom Once Lived In Okla.". Local News (KTUL). 2009-02-08. http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0209/593003.html. Retrieved 2009-08-21.  Jones, Tim. "Barack Obama: Mother not just a girl from Kansas," Chicago Tribune via Baltimore Sun (2007-03-27).
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Dougherty, Phil (2009-02-07). "Stanley Ann Dunham, mother of Barack Obama, graduates from Mercer Island High School in 1960". HistoryLink.org. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=pf_output.cfm&file_id=8897. Retrieved 2009-02-13. 
  13. ↑ Obama, Barack (1995, 2004). Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance. New York: Three Rivers Press. p. 9. ISBN 1400082773.  Mendell, David (2007). Obama: From promise to power. New York: Amistad. p. 27. ISBN 0060858206. 
    Glauberman, Stu; Burris, Jerry (2008). The dream begins: How Hawai'i shaped Barack Obama. Honolulu: Watermark Publishing. p. 25. ISBN 0981508685.  Jacobs, Sally (2008-09-21). "A father's charm, absence; Friends recall Barack Obama Sr. as a self-confident, complex dreamer whose promising life ended in tragedy". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/21/a_fathers_charm_absence/?page=full. Retrieved 2008-12-05. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Maraniss, David (2008-08-22). "Though Obama Had to Leave to Find Himself, It Is Hawaii That Made His Rise Possible". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082201679_pf.html. Retrieved 2008-12-05. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Meachem, Jon (August 22, 2008). "On his own". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/2008/08/22/on-his-own.html. Retrieved July 27, 2010. 
  16. ↑ Oywa, John (2008-11-10). "Keziah Obama: My life with Obama Senior". The Standard (Kenya). http://www.eastandard.net/InsidePage.php?id=1143999026&cid=4. Retrieved 2009-02-18. "“in keeping with the Luo customs, Obama Senior sought her consent to take another wife, which she granted." 
  17. ↑ "Born in the U.S.A.". FactCheck. August 21, 2008. http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html. Retrieved October 24, 2008. 
  18. ↑ Brodeur, Nicole (2008-02-05). "Memories of Obama's mother". The Seattle Times: p. B1. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004164387_brodeur05m.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13. "Box last saw her friend in 1961, when she visited Seattle…" 
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Martin, Jonathan (2008-04-08). "Obama's mother known here as "uncommon"". The Seattle Times: p. A1. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004334057_obama08m.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13.  Regarding the 1961 visit to Washington state: "Susan Blake,[Botkin] another high-school classmate, said that during a brief visit in 1961, Dunham was excited about her husband's plans to return to Kenya." Regarding her enrollment at University of Washington: "By 1962, Dunham had returned to Seattle as a single mother, enrolling in the UW for spring quarter and living in an apartment on Capitol Hill."
  20. ↑ Montgomery, Rick (2008-05-26). "Barack Obama's mother wasn't just a girl from Kansas". The Kansas City Star (reprinted 2008-06-01 on p. B4 of the Lawrence Journal-World): p. A1. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_multi=KC&p_product=KC&p_theme=realcities2&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&s_site=kansascity&s_trackval=KC&s_dispstring=title(Barack%20Obama's%20mother%20wasn't%20just%20a%20girl%20from%20Kansas)%20AND%20date(05/26/2008%20to%2005/26/2008)&p_field_date-0=YMD_date&p_params_date-0=date:B,E&p_text_date-0=05/26/2008%20to%2005/26/2008)&p_field_advanced-0=title&p_text_advanced-0=(Barack%20Obama's%20mother%20wasn't%20just%20a%20girl%20from%20Kansas)&xcal_numdocs=20&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no. Retrieved 2009-02-13. "But all doubts dissipated when she passed through Mercer Island in 1961 with her month-old son." 
  21. ↑ . (2007-03-27). "Video: She changed his diapers (01:02)". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/video/?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=1323682. Retrieved 2009-02-16.  Susan Blake [Botkin] (Stanley Ann Dunham's high school classmate)
  22. ↑ At some point, she gave her old friends the impression that she was on her way to visit her husband at Harvard (where he would not enroll until the fall of 1962). See Maraniss 2008.
  23. ↑ LeFevre, Charlette; co-director, Seattle Museum of the Mysteries (2009-01-09). "Barack Obama: from Capitol Hill to Capitol Hill". Capitol Hill Times. http://www.capitolhilltimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=26&SubSectionID=248&ArticleID=27447. Retrieved 2009-02-13. "A single mother who enrolled in the University of Washington in 1961 and signed up for 1962 extension program, she likely came across many social prejudices in the predominantly all-white campus.... Recently located was a listing for Stanley Ann Obama in the 1961 Polk directory at the Seattle Public Library...." 
  24. ↑ LeFevre, Charlette; Lipson, Philip; co-directors, Seattle Museum of the Mysteries (2009-01-28). "Baby Sitting Barack Obama on Seattle's Capitol Hill". Seattle Museum of the Mysteries, reprinted 2009-02-06 on p. 3 of the Seattle Gay News. http://www.seattlechatclub.org/museum.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13.  LeFevre and Lipson wrote:

    Mary Toutonghi....recalls as best she can the dates she baby sat Barack as her daughter was 18 months old and was born in July of 1959 and that would have placed the months of babysitting Barack in January and February of 1962.... Anna was taking night classes at the University of Washington, and according to the University of Washington’s registrar’s office her major was listed as history. She was enrolled at the University of Washington in the fall of 1961, took a full course load in the spring of 1962 and had her transcript transferred to the University of Hawaii in the fall of 1962. Along with the Seattle Polk Directory, Marc Leavipp of the University of Washington Registrar's office confirms 516 13th Ave. E. was the address Ann Dunham had given upon registering at the University.

    Both Anna Obama and Joseph Toutonghi were listed as residing at the same address, in the Seattle Reverse Directory, 1961-1962. See Dougherty, Phil. “Stanley Ann Dunham, mother of Barack Obama, graduates from Mercer Island High School in 1960,” HistoryLink.org (2009-02-07). Retrieved (2009-02-13).
  25. ↑ Neyman, Jenny (2009-01-20). "Obama baby sitter awaits new era — Soldotna woman eager for former charge’s reign". Redoubt Reporter. http://redoubtreporter.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-baby-sitter-awaits-new-era.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13. 
  26. ↑ One source says the scholarship was for New York University: Meachem, Jon (2008-08-23). "On his own". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/155173/. Retrieved 2008-11-14. ; others say it was for the New School for Social Research: e.g., Maraniss, David (2008-08-24). "Though Obama Had to Leave to Find Himself, It Is Hawaii That Made His Rise Possible". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/23/AR2008082301620_pf.html. Retrieved 2008-11-14.  and Ripley, Amanda (2008-04-09). "The Story of Barack Obama's Mother". Time. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1729524-3,00.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13. 
  27. ↑ Harvard University (1986). Harvard University 350th Anniversary Alumni Directory. vol. I (seventeenth ed.). Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College. p. 904. 
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Solomon, Deborah (2008-01-20). "Questions for Maya Soetoro-Ng: All in the Family". The New York Times Magazine: p. 17. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20wwln-Q4-t.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13. 
  29. ↑ "Stanley Ann Soetoro passport application to use Married Name"
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 30.3 30.4 30.5 30.6 30.7 30.8 Scott, Janny (2008-03-14). "A free-spirited wanderer who set Obama’s path". The New York Times: p. A1. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/us/politics/14obama.html?pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2009-02-13. 
  31. ↑ Sheridan, Michael; Sarah Baxter (2007-02-05). "Secrets of Obama Family Unlocked". Muslim Observer (New America Media). http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=ae5895fc29971b172938790be94ab107. Retrieved 27 August 2009. 
  32. ↑ Watson, Paul (2007-03-15). "As a child, Obama crossed a cultural divide in Indonesia". Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/15/nation/na-obama15. Retrieved 2008-06-s21. 
  33. ↑ Mendell, David (2007). Obama: From Promise to Power. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-085820-6. 
  34. ↑ Tani, Carlyn (Spring 2007). "A Kid Called Barry: Barack Obama '79". Punahou School. http://www.punahou.edu/page.cfm?p=601. Retrieved 2008-04-01. 
  35. ↑ "Easy-going youth who put passion into politics". U.S. Elections (The Irish Times). 2008-11-06. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/1106/1225893547780.html. Retrieved 2009-08-21. 
  36. ↑ Sutoro, Ann Dunham, and Roes Haryanto. 1990. "KUPEDES Development Impact Survey." BRI Briefing Booklet. Jakarta.
  37. ↑ Dunham, S. Ann (1992). Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia : surviving against all odds. University of Hawaii. http://worldcat.org/oclc/65874559. 
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 Dove, Michael (2009-08-11). "Dreams From His Mother". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11dove.html. Retrieved 2009-08-11. 
  39. ↑ Dreams From My Mother BBC World Service, September 15, 2009
  40. ↑ "Ford Foundation Links Parents of Obama and Treasury Secretary Nominee". Chronicle of Philanthropy. 2008-12-03. http://philanthropy.com/news/government/index.php?id=6453. Retrieved 2008-12-20. 
  41. ↑ Chipman, Kim (2008-02-11). "Obama Drive Gets Inspiration From His White Mom Born in Kansas". Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aOOwMgWY_VIA&refer=home. 
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 42.2 42.3 McCormick, John (2007-09-21). "Obama's mother in new ad". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-obama_adsep21,0,7546153.story?coll=chi-news-col. 
  43. ↑ OBAMA BIDS FAREWELL TO GRANDMOTHER - New York Post - December 24, 2008
  44. ↑ Essoyan, Susan (September 19, 2008). "A woman of the people: A symposium recalls the efforts of Stanley Ann Dunham to aid the poor". Honolulu Star-Bulletin. http://archives.starbulletin.com/2008/09/13/news/story09.html. Retrieved 2008-11-05. 
  45. ↑ "Book by President Barack Obama's Mother to be Published by Duke University Press". Office of News and Communications (Duke University). 2009-05-04. http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2009/05/obama_mom_book.html. Retrieved 2009-08-22.  See also: Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia
  46. ↑ "C-SPAN Airs 2009 Presidential Session Honoring S. Ann Dunham". American Anthropological Association. 2009-12-16. http://aaanet.org/issues/C-SPAN-Airs-2009-Presidential-Session-Honoring-Ann-Dunham.cfm.  "International Affairs - Panel on Ann Dunham's "Surviving against the Odds: Village INdustry in Indonesia" - Book TV". Book TV. http://www.booktv.org/Program/11147/Panel+on+Ann+Dunhams+Surviving+against+the+Odds+Village+Industry+in+Indonesia.aspx. 
  47. ↑ McCann, Ruth (2009-08-08). "Cut From Obama's Mother's Cloth". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703192.html. 
  48. ↑ "A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth". Textile Museum. 2009. http://textilemuseum.org/exhibitions/previous.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-06. 
  49. ↑ Kit, Borys (2009-09-07). "Obama's mother to be focus of documentary". Reuters. Hollywood Reporter. http://www.reuters.com/article/filmNews/idUSTRE5870JR20090908. Retrieved 2009-09-09. 
  50. ↑ De Zutter, Hank (1995-12-08). "What Makes Obama Run?". Chicago Reader. http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/archive/barackobama. Retrieved 2008-04-01. 
  51. ↑ Obama, Barack (2006-10-15). "Book Excerpt: Barack Obama". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1546298,00.html. 
  52. ↑ 52.0 52.1 Sabar, Ariel. "Barack Obama: Putting faith out front". July 16, 2007 edition. The Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0716/p01s01-uspo.htm. Retrieved June 1, 2008. 
  53. ↑ Anburajan, Aswini (2007-12-22). "Obama Asked about Connection to Islam". First Read (MSNBC). http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/12/22/531492.aspx.  Michael, Saul (2007-12-23). "I'm no Muslim, says Barack Obama". New York Daily News. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2007/12/23/2007-12-23_im_no_muslim_says_barack_obama.html. Retrieved 2008-01-04.