A mother's serious illness, a father's erratic behavior, and a marriage that few knew about. Barack Obama's parents were complex individuals who lived colorful lives — but there are a lot of details about them that are only now coming to the surface.
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00:00A mother's serious illness, a father's erratic behavior, and a marriage that few knew about.
00:06Barack Obama's parents were complex individuals who lived colorful lives, but there's a lot
00:11of details about them that are only now coming to the surface.
00:15Barack Obama Sr. was a Kenyan economist who left when his son was a toddler, and Dunham
00:20was an anthropologist who worked in Indonesia, where Obama Jr. lived during his childhood.
00:25Dunham and Obama Sr. met at the University of Hawaii.
00:28While Dunham is often portrayed as an abandoned woman left to raise a son on food stamps,
00:33she was ambitious and ahead of her time.
00:35While Obama Sr. left the family for good, Dunham also left him.
00:39Shortly after her son was born, she moved to Seattle to study at the University of Washington.
00:44They reunited with Obama Sr. in 1962, a year before he left for Kenya.
00:49Obama Sr. also attempted to have Dunham and his son move in with him in the 70s, but she
00:53had closed that door.
00:55I never really knew my own father."
00:59Obama's mother may have been known as Anne throughout her adult life, but she was Stanley
01:03Dunham growing up.
01:04She believed her father, Stanley Dunham, named her after himself after he got over the disappointment
01:09of having a daughter and not a son.
01:11However, many of her family members disagreed with her version.
01:14According to Obama's uncle, Anne's mother, Madeline, was a movie fan and drew inspiration
01:19for her daughter's name after watching In This Our Life, featuring Bette Davis as Stanley
01:23Timberlake.
01:24Madeline's brother, Charles Payne, told David Maraniss for his 2012 biography, Barack Obama,
01:29the story,
01:30"'A Woman Named Stanley.'"
01:31Madeline thought that was the height of sophistication, that Anne's father was named Stanley gave
01:36Madeline the conviction to go through with it.
01:38In her younger years, her family and friends called her Stanny Anne, but after high school,
01:42she started introducing herself by her middle name.
01:45When Dunham and Obama Sr. tied the knot, they kept the news to themselves.
01:49At the time of their wedding, Dunham was also pregnant with Barack Obama Jr., who was born
01:53six months later.
01:54That wasn't the only possible reason for all the secrecy.
01:57Dunham and Obama Sr. wed in February 1961, when interracial marriage was banned in certain
02:02states.
02:03And it wasn't just the American side that opposed the relationship.
02:06The Kenyan side was equally unhappy.
02:08Dunham told Barack about the reaction of his grandfather on his father's side after he
02:12heard about their plans.
02:13Barack wrote in Dreams From My Father,
02:15He wrote Gramps this long, nasty letter saying that he didn't approve of the marriage.
02:20He didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman.
02:23The 44th U.S. president isn't the only Obama to have graduated from Harvard University.
02:28Barack Obama's father earned an M.A. in economics from the school in the early 1960s.
02:33But Obama Sr.'s decision to pursue his education had consequences.
02:37When he moved to Massachusetts, he left a wife and a two-year-old in Hawaii.
02:41He could have made a different choice.
02:42Obama Sr. had also received a scholarship offer from the new school that would have
02:46supported all three.
02:47However, he chose Harvard, whose scholarship only covered tuition.
02:51Obama Sr. was also ambitious.
02:53He moved to the U.S. to pursue an education, intending to return to his home country to
02:57help build its government following Kenya's 1963 independence.
03:01He put that goal above everything else, even his family.
03:04I wish I'd had a father who was around and involved.
03:09Obama Sr. kept his eyes on the ball.
03:11In 1964, he returned to Kenya, got a job as a government economist, and was later
03:15promoted to senior economist.
03:17He seemed to be on the right track, but he disagreed with President Jomo Kenyatta's economic
03:21approach from the beginning.
03:23And he wasn't quiet about it.
03:24He wrote in a 1965 essay that was published by Politico in 2008,
03:29"'Maybe it is better to have something perfunctorily done than none at all.'"
03:33Obama Sr.'s sharp tongue didn't earn him many friends in the Kenyatta administration.
03:37He wasn't getting the promotions he thought he deserved.
03:40As the elder Obama saw his aspirations slip through his fingers, his behavior became more
03:44erratic.
03:45He started drinking heavily and driving irresponsibly.
03:48After Kenyatta's 1978 death, Obama Sr. found work with the Ministry of Finance.
03:53In 1982, Obama Sr. died in a car accident.
03:57Obama believes his mother was a victim of a broken healthcare system.
04:01Dunham was diagnosed with ovarian and uterine cancer in 1995.
04:05She had just moved back to the U.S. from Indonesia, where she had been misdiagnosed with indigestion
04:09in the previous year.
04:11Dunham was switching jobs and unsure whether her new insurance would cover her treatment.
04:15That's what was on her mind.
04:16Obama said in a 2007 ad,
04:18"'She wasn't thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality.'"
04:22Dunham spent her last months dealing with bureaucracy to figure out if the new insurance
04:26would deem her cancer as a pre-existing condition.
04:29Obama spoke about her struggle in a 2012 Democratic National Convention video.
04:34When my mom got cancer, she wasn't a wealthy woman, and it pretty much drained all her
04:38resources."
04:39Dunham's experience became one of the motivators behind Obama's landmark law, the Affordable
04:44Care Act.
04:45"'Watching your mother die of something that could have been prevented, that's a tough
04:51thing to deal with.'"
04:53Dunham died in November 1995, months after her diagnosis.
04:57Obama could never separate her insurance loophole from her untimely death at 52.
05:01He wrote in his 2020 memoir, A Promised Land,
05:04"'Passing a health care bill wouldn't bring my mom back, but it would save somebody's
05:08mom somewhere down the line.'
05:09And that was worth fighting for."