Tag: Michelle Obama

  • PARADE Exclusive: A Conversation With the Obamas Parade Magazine 2012-09-12 Lynn Sherr, Contributor Maggie Murphy, Editor in Chief President and Mrs. Obama photographed in the White House Map Room on Aug. 10. [Photo: Ben Baker] You hear him before you see him. After a hearty hello to the men and women working on the ground…

  • Obama is a Descendant of Nefertiti & Confucius Too Dominion of New York 2012-07-31 Alondra Nelson, Associate Professor of Sociology Columbia University There was breaking news yesterday in the lively world of presidential genealogy. Barack Obama–who is regarded as an inauthentic African-American by some because his late mother, Stanley Anne Dunham, was a white woman…

  • Obama and Race: History, Culture, Politics Routledge 2011-11-10 200 pages Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-68678-5 Edited by Richard H. King, Professor Emeritus of American and Canadian Studies University of Nottingham In this collection, academics from both sides of the Atlantic analyze the confluence of a politician, a process, and a problem—Barack Obama, the 2008 US presidential election,…

  • Michelle’s Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy—and Yours The Root 2009-10-08 Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research Harvard University First Lady Michelle Obama’s maternal third-great-grandfather was a white man who fathered Melvinia Shields’ (her maternal third great-grandmother) son, Dolphus T. Shields, both slaves.…

  • The First Family: A New Glimpse of Michelle Obama’s White Ancestors The New York Times 2016-06-22 Rachel L. Swarns, Correspondent New York Times We knew that the Sunday article about Mrs. Obama’s white ancestors would stir considerable interest so we decided to invite readers to pose questions and make comments. We never imagined that one…

  • Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady: A Family Story, Long Hidden The New York Times 2012-06-16 Rachel L. Swarns This article is adapted from “American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama” by Rachel L. Swarns, to be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, on Tuesday. REX,…

  • How to read Michelle Obama Patterns of Prejudice Volume 45, Issue 1 & 2 (Special Issue: Obama and Race) (2011) Pages 95 – 117 DOI: 10.1080/0031322X.2011.563149 Maria Lauret, Reader in American Studies University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom Michelle Obama’s role as the first African American First Lady is more than merely symbolic. Her self-representation…

  • In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery The New York Times 2009-10-08 Rachel L. Swarns Jodi Kantor WASHINGTON — In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung…

  • Six degrees of Princeton’s African-American history: America writ small Princeton Alumni Weekly Rally ‘Round the Cannon 2010-01-13 Gregg Lange, Class of 1970 The New York Times’ recent genealogy study of Michelle Obama ’85, noting for the first time her slave and mixed-race heritage, seemingly surprised a broad swath of the populace. This indicates that we…