Family of Barack Obama
The family of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, is a prominent American family active in law, education, activism and politics. Obama's immediate family circle was the first family of the United States from 2009 to 2017 during Obama's presidency, and are the first such family of African-American descent. His immediate family includes his wife Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha. Obama's wider ancestry is made up of people of Kenyan, African-American, and Old Stock American ancestry.
Immediate family
Michelle Obama
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American lawyer, university administrator, and writer who served as the First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is Barack Obama's wife, and was the first African-American first lady. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Michelle Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and spent her early legal career working at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met her husband. She subsequently worked as the associate dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago and the vice president for Community and External Affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center. Barack and Michelle married in 1992.Michelle campaigned for her husband's presidential bid throughout 2007 and 2008, delivering a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She returned to speak at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, and again during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where she delivered a speech in support of the Democratic presidential nominee, and fellow first lady, Hillary Clinton. As first lady, Michelle Obama sought to become a role model for women, an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity and healthy eating, and became a fashion icon.
Malia Obama and Sasha Obama
Barack and Michelle Obama have two daughters: Malia Ann, born July 4, 1998, and Natasha Marian, born June 10, 2001. They were both delivered at University of Chicago Medical Center by their parents' friend and physician Anita Blanchard. Sasha was the youngest child to reside in the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. arrived as an infant in 1961. In 2014, Malia and Sasha were named two of "The 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014" by Time magazine.File:President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and daughters Malia and Sasha pose for a family portrait with Bo and Sunny in the Rose Garden of the White House.jpg|thumb|Malia Obama and Sasha Obama pose with their parents, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, for an official family portrait with their dogs, Bo and Sunny, in the Rose Garden of the White House, 2015.
Before his inauguration, President Obama published an open letter to his daughters in Parade magazine, describing what he wants for them and every child in America: "to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world".
While living in Chicago, the Obamas kept busy schedules, as the Associated Press reported: "soccer, dance and drama for Malia, gymnastics and tap for Sasha, piano and tennis for both". In July 2008, the family gave an interview to the television series Access Hollywood. Obama later said they regretted allowing the children to be included. Malia and Sasha both graduated from the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., the same school that Chelsea Clinton, Tricia Nixon Cox, Archibald Roosevelt and the grandchildren of Joe Biden attended. The Obama girls began classes there on January 5, 2009; Malia graduated in 2016. Before the family moved to Washington in 2009, both girls attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory School.
In his victory speech on the night of his election, President Obama repeated his promise to Sasha and Malia to get a puppy to take with them to the White House. The selection was slow because Malia is allergic to animal dander; the president subsequently said that the choice had been narrowed down to either a labradoodle or a Portuguese Water Dog, and that they hoped to find a shelter animal. On April 12, 2009, it was reported that the Obamas had adopted a six-month-old Portuguese Water Dog given to them as a gift by Senator Ted Kennedy; Malia and Sasha named the dog Bo. The White House referred to Bo as the First Dog. In 2013, the family adopted a second Portuguese Water Dog named Sunny.
As a high school student, Malia Obama spent a portion of the summer in 2014 and 2015 working in television studios in New York and Los Angeles. She spent the summer of 2016 working as an intern in the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, Spain.
During the week June 26, 2016, to July 3, 2016, Michelle, Sasha, Malia, and Michelle's mother Marian Robinson went to Liberia to promote the Let Girls Learn Peace initiative, for which the United States has provided $27 million in aid. They met with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia and the first elected female head of state in Africa. Then they went to Morocco, where they had a panel with Freida Pinto and Meryl Streep moderated by CNN's Isha Sesay in Marrakesh and delivered a substantive amount of money to aid 62 million girls lacking access to formal education. They proceeded to Spain where Michelle delivered a message about the initiative.
In August 2016, Sasha began working at Nancy's, a seafood restaurant in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. In the fall of 2016, Malia went on an 83-day trip to Bolivia and Peru. In February 2017, Malia started an internship for Harvey Weinstein at The Weinstein Company film studio in New York City. In August 2017, Malia started attending Harvard University. Sasha graduated from Sidwell Friends in 2019 and began attending the University of Michigan in the fall. Sasha transferred to the University of Southern California and graduated in 2023.
Malia graduated from Harvard in 2021 and began working as a writer on the Amazon Prime Video television series Swarm. In spring 2023, Donald Glover confirmed that Malia was working on a short film for his production company; The Heart, starring Tunde Adebimpe, was announced as part of the Short Cuts program at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Written and directed by "Malia Ann", the film screened at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
Marian Robinson
, Michelle Obama's mother, resided in the White House during the Obama presidency.Maternal relations
Barack Obama was raised by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and maternal grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. He often referred to his family during his candidacy and two terms as president.Obama's maternal heritage consists mostly of English ancestry, with smaller amounts of German, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, and Swiss ancestry. Research by a genealogy team at Ancestry.com, published in 2012, stated that Obama is likely descended from the African slave John Punch through his mother's Bunch line, with generations of African Americans who gradually "married white" and became landowners in colonial Virginia. The Bunches later moved to Tennessee; in 1834 a daughter moved to Kansas, where Obama's mother was born four generations later.
Ann Dunham (1942–1995)
Obama's mother was born Stanley Ann Dunham. She became an anthropologist, specializing in economic anthropology and rural development. She earned her PhD degree from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and worked with the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, and Women's World Banking, to promote the use of microcredit in order to combat global poverty. The Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment in the Anthropology Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the Ann Dunham Soetoro Graduate Fellowships at the East–West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, are named in her honor. Obama has said that his mother was the dominant figure of his formative years. "The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."Stanley Armour Dunham (1918–1992)
Stanley Armour Dunham is the maternal grandfather of Barack Obama. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War II, enlisting just after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. He and his wife Madelyn Dunham raised Obama in Honolulu, Hawaii. In addition to Obama, Stanley is related to six US presidents: James Madison, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. He died in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is buried at the Punchbowl National Cemetery.Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham (1922–2008)
Madelyn Dunham was Obama's maternal grandmother who worked in banking and became vice president of a bank in Hawaii. Obama grew up with her and remembered that when he was a child, his grandmother "read me the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and told me about the men and women who marched for equality because they believed those words put to paper two centuries ago should mean something."Charles Thomas Payne (1925–2014)
Charles Thomas Payne is Madelyn Dunham's younger brother and Obama's great-uncle. He was born in 1925. Payne served during World War II in the U.S. Army 89th Infantry Division. Obama has often described Payne's role in liberating the Ohrdruf forced labor camp. There was brief media attention when Obama mistakenly identified the camp as Auschwitz during the campaign. In 2009, Payne spoke about his war experience:Ohrdruf was in that string of towns going across, south of Gotha and Erfurt. Our division was the first one in there. When we arrived there were no German soldiers anywhere around that I knew about. There was no fighting against the Germans, no camp guards. The whole area was overrun by people from the camp dressed in the most pitiful rags, and most of them were in a bad state of starvation.
Payne appeared in the visitor's gallery at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, when his great-nephew was nominated for President. He was the assistant director of the University of Chicago's Library.