An Obama chronology
October 30, 2008
RenewAmerica staff
The following is a year-by-year chronology that tracks the relationship between Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.; his father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.; his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham; his mother's parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham; his mother's second husband, Lolo Soetoro; family friend Frank Marshall Davis — a known communist; Barack's wife, Michelle Robinson Obama; Barack's longtime associate, Weather Underground founder William Ayers; and others connected with the above individuals.
The chronology was gathered from a variety of sources. Every effort has been made to verify accuracy. Additional information will be posted as it can be verified.
1905, Dec. 31 — Frank Marshall Davis was born in Arkansas City, Kansas.
1907 — Davis' parents divorced when Frank was a year old.
1911 — When he was five years old, a group of white children a few years older who had heard about lynching of blacks tried to lynch Davis and nearly hanged him.
1918, Mar. 23 — Stanley Armour Dunham was born in Kansas.
1922, Oct. 26 — Madelyn Lee Payne (Dunham) was born in Peru, Kansas, to Rolla Charles and Leona (McCurry) Payne. Her mother was part Cherokee.
1923 — Frank Davis was educated at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas.
1924-27, 29 — Davis was further educated at Kansas State Agricultural College (Kansas State University), where he studied journalism and began writing poetry.
1926 — Stanley Dunham's mother committed suicide. His father abandoned his children after her death. Stanley and his brother Ralph lived with their maternal grandparents in El Dorado, Kansas.
1927 — Frank Davis moved to Chicago, where he worked for the Chicago Evening Bulletin, the Chicago Whip, and the Gary American, all African-American newspapers.
1931 — Davis moved to Atlanta and became editor of a semiweekly paper, the Atlanta World, which he eventually turned into a daily newspaper within two years of taking the job as the paper's managing editor in 1931. Under Davis, the Atlanta Daily World became America's first successful black daily.
As editor, Davis emphasized an agenda of social realism, racial and legal justice, and black activism. He warned against Depression-era remedies advocated by communists.
1935 summer — Davis published his first book, Black Man's Verse.
1935 — Davis returned to Chicago to take the position of managing editor of the Associated Negro Press, and served as executive editor of the ANP until 1947.
1936 — Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., was born near Lake Victoria in Nyang'oma Kogelo, Alego, Siaya, Kenya, to Hussein Onyango Obama (1895–1979), and Akumu Habiba. His family belonged to the Luo tribe. Obama Sr. was raised a Muslim, but later became an atheist. He grew up in Nyang'oma Kogelo, Kenya.
1936 — Lolo Soetoro was born in Indonesia.
1937 — Frank Davis received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, participated in the federal Works Progress Administration Writers' Project, started a photography club, and worked for numerous political parties.
1940, May 5 — Stanley Armour and Madelyn Dunham married, after meeting in Wichita, Kansas.
1942, Nov. 7 — Stanley Ann Dunham was born in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. In later years, she and her family moved to California, Texas, and Seattle, Washington.
1945 — Frank Davis taught one of the first jazz history classes at the Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago.
1946 — Davis married Helen Canfield, his second wife, a white Chicago socialite who was 19 years younger than he. (His first wife's name has not been publicized.) They had five children — four girls and a boy.
1948 — Davis published 47th Street Poems.
1948 — Davis and his family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, after his friend Paul Robeson (a communist) suggested he do so. Davis operated a small wholesale paper business called Oahu Papers.
1950 — Davis was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee for his ties to the Communist Party USA, and the committee accused him of being involved in several communist-front organizations. For 19 years, he was under FBI investigation, as well.
1956 — Obama Sr. was married at age 18 in a tribal ceremony to his first wife, Kezia (who currently lives in Bracknell, Berkshire, England), with whom he had four children.
1956 — Ann Dunham's family moved to Mercer Island, Washington, where she attended Mercer Island High School. She later was a student at the University of Washington, and then the University of California, Berkeley.
1958 — Abongo (Roy) Obama was born to Barack Obama, Sr., and his first wife, Kezia.
1959 — Obama Sr. enrolled at the University of Hawaii, leaving behind Kezia and their infant son. At the time, Kezia was three months pregnant with their daughter Auma.
1959 — Frank Davis started Paradise Paper Company and wrote a weekly column, "Frank-ly speaking," for the Honolulu Record, which covered labor and racial issues.
1960 — Auma Obama was born to Obama Sr. and Kezia.
1960 — At age 17, Ann Dunham and her family moved to Hawaii, where she attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa, studying mathematics and anthropology. She met Barack Obama, Sr., in a Russian language class.
1961, Feb. 2 — Barack Obama, Sr. (age 25), and Ann Dunham (age 18) married in Maui, Hawaii, after she discovered she was pregnant. The parents on both sides objected to their marriage.
When he married Ann, Obama Sr. was still married to Kezia in Kenya, a fact Ann was unaware of.
1961, Aug. 4 — Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., was born six months after his parents' marriage (reportedly in Honolulu, although his Kenyan grandmother and others claim he was born in Mombosa, Kenya). His mother left school to take care of him while his father completed his degree.
1962, Jun. — Obama Sr. graduated from the University of Hawaii.
1962, fall — Obama Sr. left Ann Dunham and their son Barack Obama, Jr., to do graduate work at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1963 summer — Ann Dunham Obama took one-year-old Barack to join Obama Sr. in Cambridge, stopping on the way for a visit with friends in Mercer Island, Washington. Soon after arriving in Cambridge, she and her son returned to Seattle, where she enrolled in the University of Washington. She then moved back to Hawaii to be with her family.
1964, Jan. — Ann Dunham filed for divorce in Honolulu, Hawaii.
1964, Jan. 17 — Michelle Robinson (Obama) was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Fraser Robinson (who died in 1991) and Marian Shields Robinson.
1965 — Obama Sr. obtained a masters degree in economics at Harvard and met Ruth Nidesand. She followed him to Kenya, and eventually became his third wife and had two children with him (Mark and David), but she later divorced him. She then married a Tanzanian, and they had a son named Joseph Ndesandjo (1980).
Obama Sr. secured a position in the Kenyan government.
1965 — Obama Sr. wrote a paper titled "Problems Facing Our Socialism," published in the East Africa Journal, harshly criticizing the administration of then-President Jomo Kenyatta for moving the Third World country of Kenya away from socialism toward capitalism. "What is more important is to find means by which we can redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all," said Obama Sr. "This is the government's obligation."
"Theoretically," Obama Sr. wrote, "there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."
As Barack Obama, Jr., notes in Dreams from My Father, the conflict between Obama Sr. and President Kenyatta destroyed his father's career.
1967 — Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro. They met at the University of Hawaii. They moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, with Barack. Lolo worked as a government relations consultant with Mobil Corporation.
1968 — Abo Obama was born to Obama Sr. and Kezia.
1968 — Frank Davis published a hard-core pornography novel, titled Sex Rebel: Black (Memoirs of a Gash Gourmet), which was written under the pseudonym "Bob Greene." In the book, Davis describes a "threesome" relationship he and his wife had with a teenage girl named "Anne."
1969 — William Ayers, son of wealthy Chicago philanthropist Thomas Ayers and future associate of Barack Obama, Jr., created the Weather Underground — a domestic terrorist organization dedicated to promoting communist revolution in the United States.
1970, Aug. 15 — Maya Kassandra Soetoro was born to Lolo and Ann Dunham Soetoro.
1970 — Bernard Obama was born to Obama Sr. and Kezia.
1970 — Frank Davis and his wife Helen divorced.
1970 — Madelyn Dunham became one of the first female vice-presidents of the Bank of Hawaii.
1971 — Barack Obama, Jr., age 10, returned to Hawaii to attend fifth grade at Punahou School, a prestigious preparatory school. Tuition was paid with the aid of scholarships and help from his grandmother.
1971 — Obama Sr. visited Barack Obama, Jr., and his mother Ann in Hawaii. This reportedly was the last time Barack saw Obama Sr. — although his father reportedly corresponded with Barack when Barack was in college.
1971-1979 — Frank Marshall Davis increasingly became an influence in Barack's life — a fact alluded to in Barack's book Dreams from My Father, in which he refers to "Frank" as his mentor and father figure, a friend of the family with whom he often spent his evenings as a teenager.
1973 — Frank Davis made a visit to Howard University in Washington, D.C., to give a poetry reading — the first time he had seen the U.S. mainland in 25 years.
1974 — Ann Dunham returned to graduate school in Honolulu, while also raising Barack and Maya.
1977 — Ann Dunham returned to Indonesia with Maya to do field work. Barack preferred to stay in Hawaii with his grandparents.
1978 — Davis published Awakening and Other Poems.
1979 — Barack Obama, Jr., graduated from high school, moved to Los Angeles, and studied at Occidental College for two years. While at Occidental, he indulged in alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine.
1980 — Ann Dunham and Lolo Soetoro divorce.
1981 — Obama visited his mother and half-sister in Indonesia, then traveled to Pakistan and India with friends from college. Afterward, he proceeded on to Kenya, where he visited his father's family.
1981 — Obama transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. He maintained communication with his father during this period through letters until his father died in 1982.
1982 — George Hussein Onyango Obama was born to Obama Sr. and his fourth wife, Jael.
1982 — Obama Sr. lost both legs in a car accident, and then lost his job. He died not long afterward at the age of 46 in another car crash in Nairobi.
Obama Sr. was buried in Alego, at the village of Nyang'oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya.
1983 — Barack Obama, Jr., graduated from Columbia University, and then worked for a year at the Business International Corporation, a small newsletter-publishing firm that printed articles relating to global business, and later for the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Obama also became an organizer at Harlem's City College, working with student activists.
1985 to 1988 — Obama relocated to Chicago and became associated with black militants and other leftists. He worked as a "community organizer" for the "Industrial Areas Foundation" (IAF), an organization founded by Marxist radical Saul Alinsky. Its activities over the years have included a "Citizens USA" project to obtain citizenship for illegal aliens.
Obama also worked with the Alinsky group "Developing Communities Project" (DCP), of which Obama became director; "ACORN" (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now); and Project Vote. ACORN was founded by Wade Rathke — an associate of Weather Underground founder William Ayers — and is one of the largest and most powerful leftist organizations in the United States.
Barack received funding from the Woods Fund of Chicago for the DCP, with which William Ayers was reportedly connected.
1986 — Madelyn Dunham retired from the Bank of Hawaii.
1987 — Frank Marshall Davis died in Honolulu, Hawaii, of a massive heart attack at the age of 81.
1987 — Lolo Soetoro died of a liver ailment at age 51.
1988 — Barack Obama, Jr., visited Europe for the first time and spent three weeks there, and he then traveled to Kenya, where he spent five weeks with his Kenyan relatives.
1988 — Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School. After his first year, he was selected — on the basis of his grades and a writing competition — as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated in 1991, magna cum laude.
1989, Jun. — Obama met Michelle Robinson at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin (the owner of which was a close friend of William Ayers’ father), when Barack was hired as a summer associate. She was assigned for three months to advise him at the firm.
Also connected with the firm was William Ayers' wife Bernadine Dohrn, who was working there when Michelle Obama was hired. A member of her husband's former terrorist group, the Weather Underground, Dohrn had planted a bomb at a San Francisco police station in 1970 that killed one policeman and partially blinded another, according to an FBI report.
In the late sixties and early seventies, Ayers and his wife were responsible for bombing the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol Building, the New York City Police Headquarters, and other buildings. After being on the run for a decade, they surrendered to authorities in 1980, only to be set free on a technicality involving the way investigators had obtained evidence. In 2001, Ayers — who is currently a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago — told the New York Times he regretted he "didn't do enough" during his days with the Weather Underground.
1990, Feb. — Obama was chosen president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position in which he served as editor-in-chief and supervised the Law Review's staff of 80 editors. Obama's election as the first black president of the Law Review was widely publicized and profiled. As a law student, he took his summers off and returned to Chicago, where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.
1990 to 1995 — Public awareness of Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review resulted in a publishing contract for a book about race relations. To recruit him to join their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School gave Obama a fellowship and an office to work on his book. He initially intended to complete the book in a year, but the project took much longer, as the effort evolved into a personal memoir. So he could work uninterrupted, Obama and his wife Michelle traveled to Bali, where he immersed himself for several months in his manuscript. That's the official version. Recent scientific analysis of the text suggests the manuscript may have been co-authored by William Ayers, by then a nearby neighbor of Barack. The book was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.
According to one source, Obama initially received a $125,000 advance from publisher Simon and Shuster in 1992 for his book, but failed to produce a manuscript. Although he and his wife did in fact travel to Bali to gain the "peace and quiet" to write, he still produced no publishable draft. Obama was then asked to return part of the advance payment, and the contract was cancelled. He came back to Chicago, signed a new contract (with Times Book) for $40,000, and in time delivered a completed manuscript. This version of the facts reinforces allegations that Obama had a ghostwriter.
1992 — Ann Dunham obtained a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii with a dissertation titled Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving and thriving against all odds. Ann then undertook 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, and Women's World Banking — and also worked as a consultant in Pakistan. She dealt with leaders from organizations involved with Indonesian human rights, women's rights, and grassroots development.
1992 — Stanley Dunham died in Honolulu at age 73 and was buried in the Punchbowl National Cemetery.
1992, Apr. to Oct. — Obama directed Illinois' Project Vote in a voter registration drive that succeeded in registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African-Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama among its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.
1992, Oct. 3 — Obama and Michelle Robinson were married by Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
1992 — Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, being first contracted as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004.
1992 — Obama helped found Public Allies, an organization patterned after Alinsky's AIF that recruits young people to perform "public service" while they are indoctrinated in socialist theory. Obama's wife Michelle became the group's Executive Director in 1993. The program later served as the model for Obama's "Universal Voluntary Public Service" plan.
1993 — Obama joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a twelve-attorney law firm that specialized in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development. He was an associate from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004.
1993 to 2002 — Obama was on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project.
1994 — Ann Dunham discovered she had ovarian and uterine cancer. She moved back to Hawaii to live near her widowed mother, who cared for her.
1995 — Ann died at the age of 52. After a memorial service held at the University of Hawaii, Barack and his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, cast Ann's ashes over the Pacific Ocean on the south side of Oahu.
1995 — Obama launched his first run for the Illinois Senate in the home of William Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn — who hosted meetings to introduce Obama to their neighbors. Obama and the couple lived only blocks apart in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, and shared the same liberal-progressive circle of friends.
1995 — Ayers founded the 500-million-dollar education foundation Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a radical "school reform" group that at one point granted more than $600,000 to an organization run by the former head of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of America. At its inception, Ayers appointed Obama the chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a position he held until 1999.
From 1995 to 2002, Ayers and Obama worked as a team to advance the foundation's agenda, write and implement its bylaws, and funnel money to such organizations as ACORN, which later worked in behalf of Obama's presidential campaign.
1996 — Obama was elected to the state senate in Illinois.
1998 — Malia Ann Obama was born to Barack and Michelle.
1998 — Obama was re-elected to the Illinois State Senate.
1999 to 2002 — Obama and Williams Ayers were members of the board together of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty group of which Ayers went on to become Chairman of the Board.
2000 — Obama lost a Democratic primary run for U.S. House of Representatives to Bobby Rush.
2001 — Natasha Obama was born to Barack and Michelle.
2001, Mar. 30 — Obama spoke against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in the 92nd General Assembly of the Illinois State Senate. The number one reason he gave for voting against the act was that it would potentially undermine Roe v. Wade.
2001 — Obama gave a radio interview to Chicago station WBEZ-FM, in which he discussed the "redistribution of wealth" from whites to blacks.
2002 mid — Obama began considering a run for the U.S. Senate and enlisted political strategist David Axelrod. Barack announced his candidacy in January 2003.
2002 — Obama was re-elected to the Illinois State Senate.
2003, Jan. — Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee after Democrats regained a majority in the state senate. He sponsored bipartisan legislation to track racial profiling, and a bill that made Illinois the first state to require videotaping of homicide interrogations.
2003, Mar. — As chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, Obama blocked passage of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in the state senate.
2003 — Obama's fundraiser and close friend, Tony Rezko, helped raise the seed money for Obama's U.S. Senate race. In 2008, Rezko was convicted of several counts of bribery and fraud.
2003 — Obama paid special tribute to Rashid Khalidi, professor of Mideast studies at the University of Chicago, during a farewell held for Khalidi. A virulent critic of Israel, Khalidi has justified Palestinian terrorist attacks against the Jewish state. Barack and Michelle frequently were dinner companions of the Khalidis.
Former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn were also in attendance at the farewell for Khalidi.
When Obama and Ayers served together on the left-wing Chicago Woods Fund board, they underwrote the Arab-American Action Network (AAAN) with tens of thousands of dollars. The anti-Israel group was created by Khalidi and his wife Mona.
2004, Jun. 7 — Obama was in socialist billionaire George Soros' New York home for an Obama campaign fundraising event. Soros has reportedly funneled large sums of money to the Obama campaign.
2004, Jul. — Obama keynoted the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.
2004, Aug. — Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act for the reason that it included provisions that "would have taken away from doctors their professional judgment when a fetus is viable." In his logic, Obama was equating a baby who survived an abortion with an unborn fetus.
2004, Aug. to Nov. — Obama ran against Alan Keyes for the U.S. Senate. Keyes was asked to run late in the election season by the Illinois GOP to fill the vacancy left by Jack Ryan, who stepped down because of a sex scandal. The scandal broke after media who were aligned with Obama pressed to have Ryan's confidential divorce records unsealed.
2005, Jan. 4 — Obama was sworn in as U.S. Senator.
2005 — Obama's family moved from their Hyde Park condo to their $1.65 million house in the Kenwood District of Chicago. The home was purchased on the same day that Tony Rezko's wife Rita purchased the adjoining empty lot.
2006 — Obama visited Kenya to campaign for Raila Odinga, a communist who was running for president to oust the pro-USA incumbent, President Mwai Kibaki. After Odinga lost the election, he incited riots that killed 1,500 Kenyans and displaced more than a half million people from their homes. Christian churches were set on fire, and in one case, 50 parishioners, mostly women and children, were locked inside and burned to death.
2006, Oct. 17 — Obama published The Audacity of Hope.
2006, Dec. 4 — Obama met with George Soros in Soros' Manhattan office. After an hour of discussion, Soros took Obama to a conference room where a dozen people were waiting to talk with Obama. Among them was UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland/Swiss Bank) U.S. chief Robert Wolf. A week later, Robert Wolf had dinner in Washington, D.C., with Obama to map out campaign strategy.
2007, early Jan. — The New York Times announced that Obama had the support of two high-level Democratic fundraisers: George Soros and Robert Wolf. By mid-April, 2007, Wolf alone had raised $500,000 for Obama.
2007, Feb. 10 — Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States.
2007, Apr. 7 — An Obama fundraising party for elite New Yorkers was held at the home of financier Steven Gluckstern, former chairman of George Soros' Democracy Alliance. A photo of the event — published in New York magazine April 16, 2007 — showed George Soros seated close to Obama.
2007, May 18 — George Soros hosted a party for Obama at the Greenwich, Connecticut, mansion of Paul Tudor Jones, who runs Tudor Investment Corporation. The sponsors collected $2,300 from each of the approximately 300 attendees ($690,000), the local newspaper Greenwich Time reported.
2008, Jun. 3 — Obama became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, after defeating Hillary Clinton in the primaries.
2008, Aug. 25 — Obama won the nomination of the Democratic Party in Denver, Colorado. Just prior to the convention, he chose Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his running mate. The ticket has been called the most liberal in modern American history.
2008, Oct. 28 — The Obama campaign reportedly set a record by raising $660 million since the beginning of the 2008 election — much of it alleged to have come from foreign sources.
2008, Oct. 29 — An unprecedented half-hour promotion of Obama was aired on all major U.S. networks except ABC, which declined to broadcast the paid political advertisement.
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