Father spoke of having Obama adopted
US immigration files from ’61 reveal Kenyan student’s plan
President Obama as a young boy, with his father, who left when his son was 2.
(Obama for America via Associated Press)
In the
spring of 1961, President Obama’s father revealed a plan for his unborn
son that might have changed the course of American political history.
The
elder Barack H. Obama, a sophomore at the University of Hawaii, had
come under scrutiny by federal immigration officials who were concerned
that he had more than one wife. When he was questioned by the school’s
foreign student adviser, the 24-year-old Obama insisted that he had
divorced his wife in his native Kenya. Although his new wife, Ann
Dunham, was five months pregnant with their child - who would be called
Barack Obama II - Obama declared that they intended to put their child
up for adoption.
“Subject
got his USC wife ‘Hapai’ [Hawaiian for pregnant] and although they were
married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements
with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,’’ according to a memo
describing the conversation with Obama written by Lyle H. Dahling, an
administrator in the Honolulu office of what was then called the US
Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Obama,
the Subject, and his USC, or United States citizen, wife, obviously,
did not put their baby up for adoption. Whether the young couple
actually considered such a step, or the elder Obama made the story up in
order to appease immigration officials who at the time were considering
his request for an extension of his stay in the United States, is
unclear. Family members on both sides of the marriage now say they never
heard any mention of adoption.
But
his statement provides a unique glimpse into the relationship between
the president’s parents and the fragility of his connection to the
father whom he would little know.
Dahling’s
memo, dated April 12, 1961, is one of dozens of documents in the elder
Obama’s “alien’’ file released by the Department of Homeland Security in
response to a Freedom of Information Act request made in the course of
research on a biography of Obama’s father. Obama was visiting the United
States on a foreign student visa which required him to apply for an
annual extension of his stay during the five years he was attending US
colleges.
The memo advised
that officials should continue to monitor the senior Obama’s personal
life, and raised concerns about his behavior, noting that the previous
summer he had been warned about his “playboy ways.’’
Robert
L. Gibbs, the former White House press secretary, said at the time the
document was released that President Obama had never been told that his
mother had considered putting him up for adoption. Nor, Gibbs said, was
Obama previously aware of the INS memo. Gibbs said that the White House
had made no effort to determine if Dunham had ever had a conversation
with the Salvation Army. The president, he added, “is absolutely
convinced that she did not.’’Continued...
President Obama as a young boy, with his father, who left when his son was 2.
(Obama for America via Associated Press)
Father spoke of having Obama adopted
US immigration files from ’61 reveal Kenyan student’s plan
President Obama as a young boy, with his father, who left when his son was 2.
(Obama for America via Associated Press)
Page 2 of 4 --
From
the early 20th century through the 1970s the Salvation Army operated
nearly a dozen residential maternity homes throughout the United States,
one of which was located in Honolulu. Residents who chose not to keep
their babies were able to make arrangements to put them up for adoption
through local agencies. The agency maintains records of its maternity
homes but provides them only to birth mothers or children who request
them, according to Kathy Lovin, public affairs manager for The Salvation
Army’s western territory in Long Beach, Calif. Lovin declined to say
whether Ann Dunham, who died in 1995, spoke with Salvation Army
officials at all about the possibility of putting her child up for
adoption.
Neither President
Obama nor the White House has since asked the Salvation Army if there is
any record that his parents talked with the organization regarding his
possible adoption, according to a White House press person who declined
to be identified.
The INS
memo can be regarded from several perspectives. On the one hand, Ann
Dunham had good reason to consider surrendering her child. At the time
that she gave birth in 1961, Dunham was just 18 years old, and
mixed-race marriage - while legal in Hawaii - was a felony in many of
the 22 states in which it was banned. Even in Hawaii, the only state at
the time with a nonwhite majority, blacks accounted for less than 1
percent of the population, and a black face drew curious stares on the
streets of Honolulu.
In his
memoir, “Dreams from My Father,’’ President Obama mused that his mother
might have considered putting her child up for adoption given the
cultural hostility to mixed race marriages that existed at the time.
Even in sophisticated urban centers, he wrote, “. . . the hostile
stares, the whispers, might have driven a woman in my mother’s
predicament into a back-alley abortion - or at the very least to a
distant convent that could arrange for adoption.’’
While
it is possible that the elder Obama’s statement to the student adviser
was true, family and friends say they do not believe she ever considered
such a thing. Dunham, they maintain, was a bold iconoclast even as a
young woman and regarded her unborn child as very much her
responsibility, one that she would never have surrendered.
“I
never heard any talk of adoption whatsoever,’’ said Charles Payne,
Dunham’s maternal uncle, who is now in his 80s and living in Chicago.
“Ann decided she had done this and this was her child and she was going
to take care of him. From day one, as far as I could tell, she and
Madelyn [Dunham] and Stanley [Dunham] were all completely committed to
Barack.’’Continued...
President Obama as a young boy, with his father, who left when his son was 2.
(Obama for America via Associated Press)
Father spoke of having Obama adopted
US immigration files from ’61 reveal Kenyan student’s plan
President Obama as a young boy, with his father, who left when his son was 2.
(Obama for America via Associated Press)
Page 3 of 4 --
Nor
do several of Ann Dunham’s friends at the time recall her mentioning
giving up her baby. On the contrary, Susan Botkin Blake, a high school
friend of Dunham’s, describes how entranced her friend was with her
small son during a visit to Seattle just weeks after he was born.
“She
was wildly in love with Barack Obama, her husband, and very excited
about her future with him,’’ recalled Blake. “From my perspective, she
had no equivocation about her baby in the slightest. She was thrilled
with him.’’
Barack Obama
Sr., on the other hand, would have had reason to worry that having a
child in the United States could have significant consequences. For
starters, Obama, who had two children in Kenya, was having severe
financial problems. Although he told Dunham that he had gotten divorced
from his Kenyan wife, he apparently did not tell her about his other
children.
Obama was a member
of the Luo ethnic group, the third largest of Kenya’s tribes, among
whose members polygamy was common. His own father had at least four
wives. In fact, Obama was still married to his Kenyan wife, Grace Kezia
Obama, and apparently worried about the financial burden of another
child.
Of greater concern
was his immigration status. At the time that he made his statement about
adoption in spring 1961, Obama was in the midst of applying to the INS
for an extension of his stay in the United States. Although it was a
routine process that was required of foreign students periodically, the
application entailed an examination of the student’s academic record and
general behavior.
Obama
would have wanted to present a case that would impress immigration
authorities. A bigamist with a mixed-race baby, if that is how
authorities chose to see him, was not likely to be the strongest of
candidates. As Gibbs assessed the elder Obama’s possible motive: “He was
trying to convince immigration to let him stay. So, part of his effort
was to convince immigration that some of the responsibilities that he
had he would not continue to have.’’
University
of Hawaii and federal immigration authorities were already alarmed
about Obama’s relationships with women and perplexed as to his marital
status. Since his arrival at the university in 1959, Obama had
repeatedly failed to complete routine paperwork at UH’s foreign students
office regarding his domestic status that would have clarified whether
he had a wife in Kenya, according to an employee in the office who
declined to be identified. Even the exact year of his own birth was
unclear. Obama alternately reported to immigration and academic
officials that he was born in both 1934 and 1936. Although the INS memo
records the year of his birth as 1934, Obama’s family members and other
records indicate that he was probably born in 1936.Continued...
President Obama as a young boy, with his father, who left when his son was 2.
(Obama for America via Associated Press)
Page 4 of 4 --
Father spoke of having Obama adopted
US immigration files from ’61 reveal Kenyan student’s plan
President Obama as a young boy, with his father, who left when his son was 2.
(Obama for America via Associated Press)
When
he married Dunham in February 1961, school administrators began to
probe his status in earnest. Sumi McCabe, then UH’s foreign student
adviser, first brought attention to the matter during a phone call to
Dahling, the INS administrator, the following April. According to
Dahling’s memo, “Mrs. McCabe further states that [Obama] has been
running around with several girls since he first arrived here and last
summer she cautioned him about his playboy ways. [Obama] replied that he
would ‘try’ to stay away from the girls.’’ But he didn’t try very hard.
Instead, he began dating the dark-eyed Ann Dunham.
Now
that he was married to a US citizen and was soon to become the father
of an American child, immigration officials would not have been
reassured by his official records. On some of the forms in his alien
file, Obama reported that he had a Kenyan wife. After he married Dunham,
he sometimes reported her as his wife. More often than not, he left the
section blank.
All the while, he wrote letters to his family and friends back home in Kenya, inquiring about his wife and children there.
Noting
that Obama appeared to have a wife in Kenya and another in Hawaii,
Dahling raised the possibility in his memo of charging Obama with
polygamy or bigamy in order to get a deportation order against him. In
the end, he suggested they keep an eye on him.
“Recommend
that Subject be closely questioned before another extension is granted -
and denial be considered,’’ Dahling concluded. “If his USC wife tries
to petition for him, make sure an investigation is conducted as to the
bona fide of the marriage.’’
As
it turned out, the matter soon moved out of Honolulu administrators’
purview. The following year, Obama left his small family in Honolulu and
headed to Harvard University to pursue a doctorate in economics. While
in Cambridge, Obama would not only meet his third wife, but the question
of how many wives he had would spiral into a confrontation with
devastating consequences.
Sally
Jacobs is a Boston Globe reporter. Her book, “The Other Barack, The
Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father,’’ will be released
next week. 
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