The Other Obama-Kennedy Connection....! JFK Airlifted Obama's Father to America..

[KoKo]

The other Obama-Kennedy connection
How a Kenyan airlift that brought a young scholar named Obama to America in 1960 - where he met a wife and fathered a son - was saved by a young senator from Massachusetts.


Elana Schor in Washington
Thursday January 10, 2008


Guardian Unlimited

In his command of the US political stage over the past year, Barack Obama has inspired many a comparison to John F Kennedy. Both young senators brought a lofty message, an appealing young family and a movie-star aura to the presidential race. But the two men forged a less known link - before Obama was even born.

The bond began with Kenyan labour leader Tom Mboya, an advocate for African nationalism who helped his country gain independence in 1963. In the late 1950s, Mboya was seeking support for a scholarship program that would send Kenyan students to US colleges - similar to other exchanges the US backed in developing nations during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Mboya appealed to the state department. When that trail went cold, he turned to then-senator Kennedy. Kennedy, who chaired the senate subcommittee on Africa, arranged a $100,000 grant through his family’s foundation to help Mboya keep the program running.

“It was not a matter in which we sought to be involved,” Kennedy said in an August 1960 senate speech. “Nevertheless, Mr Mboya came to see us and asked for help, when none of the other foundations could give it, when the federal government had turned it down quite precisely. We felt something ought to be done.”

One of the first students airlifted to America was Barack Obama Sr, who married a white Kansas native named Ann Dunham during his US studies. Their son, born in 1961 and named for his father, has only once mentioned his Kennedy connection on the campaign trail.

“The Kennedys decided: ‘We’re going to do an airlift,’” senator Obama said during a March speech in Selma, Alabama. “We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country.”

Many of the airlifted students worked their way up to elite universities in America before returning to help Kenya adjust to independence, and Obama Sr was no exception. He left the family to take a Harvard scholarship when the young Obama was only 2 years old, beginning the future presidential candidate’s remarkable personal journey to Indonesia, New York and Chicago and Capitol Hill.

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:koO8NxyWxSoJ:rfkin2008.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/jfk-brought-obamas-father-to-us-in-1960/+Obama+Scholarship+from+Kennedy+Foundation&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=firefox-a

[MNDemNY]

1. Question, what happened to Obama's father?

[Pirate Smile]

2. He died in a car crash in Kenya.

If your question is why did he leave his family when Obama was only 2 years old, that answer is that he had two options for continuing his studies in the US (graduate school I think).

He had one scholarship to a school (I can't remember which one) which would have included enough $$$ so that he could have taken his wife and son with him OR he could go to Harvard but only with enough $$$ for him alone. He chose Harvard. Obama's Mom divorced him after he left. I was amazed in "Dreams from my Father" at how Obama's Mom and Grandparents were only complementary of his father considering how he had abandoned his wife and young son. Obama was obviously fully aware of the abandonment and wrestled with that while growing up.

[Triana]

5. Some background on Obama and his father (father had several wives...)

http://www.alevin.com/weblog/archives/001606.html

"It turns out that Obama's father had a wife and children in Africa before coming to Hawaii. Barack Senior met yet a third woman at Harvard, who moved to Africa and raised several more children in the extended Obama family. Barack senior is smart and ambitious, and initially successful. But he runs afoul of the Kenyan dictatorship in his arrogance and naivete, loses his job and is blacklisted. Uneployed and broke, he turns to alcohol and delusions of grandeur, while his children raise themselves. He is rehabilitated later by a new regime, but the damage he has done to his family leaves ongoing bitterness after his death."

[dailykoff]

3. Wow.

Thanks for that! :cry:

[hisownpetard]

4. Really interesting how things intersect. K&R.

[TwilightGardener]

6. That is really neat.

[goodgd_yall]

7. "Airlifted"

Interesting the heroic vocabulary on this piece about Barack Obama, Sr. The stuff of myth. Obama,Sr. was put on a plane and flown out to America. "Airlift" is a bit much, no?