LexisNexis will get you some interesting finds.
Copyright 1990 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe
February 15, 1990, Thursday, City Edition
SECTION: METRO/REGION; Pg. 29 p.
LENGTH: 1196 words
HEADLINE: A Law Review breakthrough
BYLINE: By Linda Matchan, Globe Staff
BODY:
Barack Obama became the first black president of the influential Harvard Law Review last week, after a marathon 17-hour selection process that pitted him against 18 other candidates. But he says he felt the full significance of the honor only after a rival candidate, also black, embraced him.
"He held onto me for a long time," said Obama, 28, a second-year student at Harvard Law School. "It was an important moment for me, because with that embrace I realized my election was not about me, but it was about us, about what we could do and what we could accomplish."
It is entirely characteristic of Obama, a man of substantial accomplishments, that he would view his success in terms of American blacks and minorities in general rather than as a personal victory.
He points out, for instance, that four of this year's 19 candidates are black, and two of the nine finalists are black women. (In the first 85 years of the law journal's 102-year history, there were only three black members. )
"To some extent, I'm a symbolic stand-in for a lot of the changes that have been made," said Obama, who will function as editor-in-chief of the student-run journal, which is regarded as the leading legal periodical in the country. Its presidency almost always leads to prestigious judicial clerkships after graduation.
"I want to make people aware that although I am benefiting from a lot of attention right now, there is a broader trend: a far greater willingness at this stage of the history of the Review to appreciate the abilities and talents of minorities and women in the legal profession."
It is not that Obama is self-deprecating. On the contrary, he is so exceptionally self-assured and directed - as when he notes that he sought the presidency because "I felt I'd enjoy having an influence on the course of legal debate in the country" - that one friend recalls being completely overwhelmed when they met four years ago.
"I thought, 'This guy sounds like he's president of the country already,'" said John Owens, a former co-worker from Chicago, during a telephone interview. "I've never met anyone who could leave that impression after only five minutes."
What seems to motivate Barack Obama is a strong identification with what he calls "the typical black experience," paired with a mission to help the black community and promote social justice.
This is what fueled his unusual path, from childhood in Indonesia, where he grew up, he says, "as a street kid," to adolescence in Hawaii, where he was raised by his grandparents; to college in California and New York, where after graduating he wrote articles for Fortune 500 companies so he could see how the economic system works. He then had a job directing a community organization to advocate for poor blacks in Chicago, then moved on to Harvard Law School, where he hopes to learn more about "the nuts and bolts of how the system works" so he can return to public interest work or electoral politics.
Obama's background is a melange of different cultures. His late father, who was black, was born in the small Kenyan village of Alego, studied at Harvard and Oxford and became a senior economist for the Kenyan government. His mother, who is white, is a Kansas-born anthropologist who now works as a developmental consultant in Indonesia.
His parents met and married in Hawaii and divorced when Obama was 2. His father then returned to Kenya, and Obama was raised, at least initially, by his mother. "To a large extent I roamed around a lot as a kid," he said during an interview in a Harvard Square restaurant.
From the ages of 6 to 10, he lived in Indonesia and attended an Indonesian-speaking school; he kept up his English studies, at his mother's insistence, by waking at 5 a.m. each day to take correspondence courses.
He says many of his friends were "street urchins," and it was here, on the outskirts of Jakarta, that he says he became aware of the implications and realities of poverty, of "the gaps between the have's and have-nots." Although his family was comfortable financially, "we couldn't afford the fancy American schools in Indonesia," Obama said. When he reached fifth grade, his mother, concerned that he would not get an adequate education in Indonesia, sent him to live with his grandparents in Hawaii.
Obama stayed in Hawaii through high school, and it was during this period that he began a regular correspondence with his father, whose heritage was to be a major influence on his life, ideals and priorities.
He says one of his most valued possessions belonged to his Kenyan grandfather, who worked as a cook for the British before the country gained its independence. It was the passport he was required to carry at all times; it described his grandfather, at age 46, as "a boy" and a "good . . . cooperative" cook.
"It is an important artifact for me," said Obama. He said that even though his heritage is one-half white, and although he has had a mixture of influences in his life, "my identification with the - quote - typical black experience in America was very strong and very natural, and wasn't something forced and difficult.
"When you are young, your identity is shaped by outside forces as much as internal forces. If you are black and called 'nigger' occasionally, if you listened to Dr. Martin Luther King on TV or saw Malcolm X make a speech, your whole environment starts telling you what you are."
Those close to Obama - tall, reed-thin, soft-spoken - describe him as a compulsive worker, though they are unsure what it is, at bottom, that has inspired his single-minded concern for social justice.
"He has been like this as long as I can remember," said his half-sister Maya Soetoro, a student at New York's Barnard College. "I wish I could shed light on exactly what has made him so old at such a young age."
In college, he specialized in international relations at Occidental College in Los Angeles and, for his final two years, at Columbia University in New York. He transferred, he said, "because I was concerned with urban issues and I wanted to be around more black folks in big cities."
After short stints as a business journalist and as an advocate for a Harlem-based public interest research group, he conducted what he refers to as a "nationwide search" for community-based social action work with a liveable salary.
He found it in Chicago. He became the director and sole paid employee of the Developing Communities Project, a church-based advocacy organization for low- and middle-income blacks. His annual salary was $ 13,000. By the time he left, the organization had 13 employees and a solid record of accomplishments, from the removal of asbestos in public housing units to education counseling for disadvantaged youths.
Obama plans to return to Chicago after graduation - "I've finally found a home," he said, smiling - and intends to resume community work and possibly to enter politics.
"Having had access to the system, to a language that is sometimes foreign" to blacks, Obama said, "I have a certain mission to make sure that the gifts I've received are plowed back into the community."
And this one, which is interesting because many of the attacks on him by progressives echo the same criticisms of him 16 years ago:
Copyright 1990 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
The Toronto Star
March 18, 1990, Sunday, SUNDAY SECOND EDITION
SECTION: PEOPLE; Pg. D5
HEADLINE: Cook's grandson gets top legal post
BYLINE: By Tammerlin Drummond Special to The Star (Los Angeles Times)
DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Barack Obama stares silently at a wall of fading black-and-white photographs in the muggy second-floor offices of the Harvard Law Review. He lingers over one row of solemn faces, his predecessors of 40 years ago.
All are men. All are dressed in dark-colored suits and ties. All are white.
It is a sobering moment for Obama, 28, who in February became the first black to be elected president in the 102-year history of the prestigious student-run law journal.
The post, considered the highest honor a student can attain at Harvard Law School, almost always leads to a coveted clerkship with the U.S. Supreme Court after graduation and a lucrative offer from the law firm of one's choice.
Yet Obama, who has gone deep into debt to meet the $25,000-a-year cost of a Harvard Law School education, has left many in disbelief by asserting that he wants neither.
"One of the luxuries of going to Harvard Law School is it means you can take risks in your life," Obama said recently. "You can try to do things to improve society and still land on your feet. That's what a Harvard education should buy - enough confidence and security to pursue your dreams and give something back."
After graduation next year, Obama says, he probably will spend two years at a corporate law firm, then look for community work. Down the road, he plans to run for public office.
Blend of cultures
The son of a Kenyan economist and an American anthropologist, Obama is a tall man with a quick, boyish smile whose fellow students rib him about his trademark tattered blue jeans.
"I come from a lot of worlds and I have had the unique opportunity to move through different circles," Obama said. "I have worked and lived in poor black communities and I can translate some of their concerns into words that the larger society can embrace."
His own upbringing is a blending of diverse cultures. Born in Hawaii, where his parents met in college, Obama was named Barack (blessed in Arabic) after his father. The elder Obama was among a generation of young Africans who came to the United States to study engineering, finance and medicine, skills that could be taken back home to build a new, strong Africa. In Hawaii, he married Obama's mother, a white American from Wichita, Kan.
Two years later, Obama's parents separated and he moved to a small village outside Jakarta, Indonesia, with his mother, an anthropologist. There, he spent his boyhood playing with the sons and daughters of rice farmers and rickshaw drivers, attending an Indonesian-speaking school, where he had little contact with Americans.
Every morning at 5, his mother would wake him to take correspondence classes for fear he would forget his English.
It was in Indonesia, Obama said, where he first became aware of abject poverty and despair.
"It left a very strong mark on me living there because you got a real sense of just how poor folks can get," he said. "You'd have some army general with 24 cars and if he drove one once then eight servants would come around and wash it right away. But on the next block, you'd have children with distended bellies who just couldn't eat."
After six years in Indonesia, Obama was sent back to the United States to live with his maternal grandparents in Hawaii in preparation for college. It was then that he began to correspond with his father, a senior economist for the Kenyan finance ministry who recounted intriguing tales of an African heritage that Obama knew little about.
Obama treasured his father's tales of walking miles to school, using a machete to hack a path through the elephant grass - the legends and traditions of the Luo tribe, a proud people who inhabited the shores of Lake Victoria.
He still carries a passbook that belonged to his grandfather, an herbalist who was the first family member to leave the small Kenyan village of Alego, move to the city and don Western clothes.
"He was a cook and he used to have to carry this passbook to work for the English," Obama recalls. "At the age of 46 it had this description of him that said, 'He's a colored boy, he's responsible and he's a good cook.' "
Two generations later, at the most widely respected legal journal in the country, the grandson of the cook is giving the orders.
Some of Obama's peers question the motives of this second-year law student. They find it puzzling that despite Obama's openly progressive views on social issues, he has also won support from staunch conservatives. Ironically, he has come under the most criticism from fellow black students for being too conciliatory toward conservatives and not choosing more blacks to other top positions on the law review.
"He's willing to talk to them (the conservatives) and he has a grasp of where they are coming from, which is something a lot of blacks don't have and don't care to have," said Christine Lee, a second-year law student who is black. "His election was significant at the time, but now it's meaningless because he's becoming just like all the others (in the Establishment)."
Although some question what personal goals motivate Obama, his interest in social issues is deeply grounded.
At Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama studied international relations and spent much of his time helping to organize anti-apartheid protests. In his junior year, he transferred to Columbia University, "more for what (New York City) had to offer than for the education," he said.
After graduating, Obama landed a job writing manuals for a New York-based international trade publication. Once his college loans were paid off, he took a $13,000-a-year job as director for the Developing Communities Project, a church-based social action group in Chicago.
There, he and a coalition of ministers set out to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued by crime and high unemployment. Obama helped form a tenants' rights group in the housing projects and established a job training program.
"I took a chance and it paid off," he said. "It was probably the best education that I've ever had."
After four years, Obama decided it was time to move on. He wanted to learn how to use the political system to effect social change. He set his sights on Harvard Law School, where he quickly distinguished himself as a top student. He was soon chosen through the strength of his writing and grades to serve as one of 80 student editors on the law review.
Unlike many peer-review professional journals, the law review is run solely by students. It is widely considered the major forum for current legal debate and consequently is watched closely by courts around the country.
In his second year at law school, Obama decided to run for law review president after a conversation with a black friend.
"I said I was not planning to run and he said, 'Yes, you are because that is a door that needs to be kicked down and you can take it down'."
It was a marathon selection process, an arcane throwback to the early days of the review. The student editors deliberated behind closed doors from 8:30 a.m. until early the next day. The 19 anxious candidates took turns cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner for the selection committee, whose members emerged with a historic decision.
"Before I could say a word, another black student who was running just came up and grabbed me and hugged me real hard," Obama recalled. "It was then that I knew it was more than just about me. It was about us. And I am walking through a lot of doors that had already been opened by others."
But few students at the law review were prepared for the deluge of interview requests for Obama from newspapers, radio and television stations.
Some students made light of the media invasion, posting a memo titled "The Barack Obama Story, a Made for TV Movie, Starring Blair Underwood as Barack Obama."
Yet tensions were building. White students grumbled about the attention paid to Obama's race. Black students criticized him for not choosing more blacks for other top positions at the review. Caught in the cross-fire, Obama, who has a tendency toward understatement, downplayed his own achievements.
"For every one of me, there are thousands of young black kids with the same energies, enthusiasm and talent that I have who have not gotten the opportunity because of crime, drugs and poverty," he said. "I think my election does symbolize progress but I don't want people to forget that there is still a lot of work to be done."
Describing Obama, fellow students and professors point to a self-confidence tempered by modesty as one of his greatest attributes.
Able to build
"He's very unusual, in the sense that others who might have something approximating his degree of insight are very intimidating to their fellow students or inconsiderate and thoughtless," said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor. "He's able to build upon what other students say and see what's valuable in their comments without belittling them."
As law review president, Obama is the last person to edit student articles, as well as longer pieces by accomplished legal scholars. The review publishes eight times a year and receives about 600 freelance articles each year.
Referring to his fellow students at the review, whom he edits, he said: "These are the people who will be running the country in some form or other when they graduate. If I'm talking to a white conservative who wants to dismantle the welfare state, he has the respect to listen to me and I to him. That's the biggest value of the Harvard Law Review. Ideas get fleshed out and there is no party line to follow."
Obama spends 50 to 60 hours each week on law review business. The full-time volunteer job leaves little time for an additional 12 hours of class, plus homework. When it comes to choosing between the two, as it often does, Obama usually misses class.
One of Obama's most difficult tasks as editor-in-chief is keeping the peace amid the clashing egos of writers and editors.
"He is very, very diplomatic," said Radhika Rao, 24, a third-year law student from Lexington, Ind. "He is very outgoing and has a lot of experience in handling people, which stands him in good stead."
Outside the review, other blacks at Harvard are skeptical that Obama's appointment will change much at the Ivy League institution, where 180 out of 1,601 law students are black.
"While I applaud Obama's achievement, I guess I am not as hopeful for what this will mean for other blacks at Harvard," said Derrick Bell, the school's first black tenured law professor.
"There is a strange character to this black achievement. When you have someone that reaches this high level, you find that he is just deemed exceptional and it does not change society's view of all of the rest."
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