Unearthed Letters Written By Barack Obama’s Father Raise Doubts About His Family Story

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Wouldn’t you find it odd if you discovered that letters your father wrote throughout his life never mentioned you, even letters written at the time of your birth? Interestingly enough, that’s the situation that former President Barack Obama found himself in.

In letters discovered buried in an archive box, former President Obama’s Kenyan father made no mention whatsoever of his son, raising further doubt about the personal narrative that helped put Obama on a rapid path to the White House.

The New York Times published six letters from a collection of 24 written by Barack Hussein Obama Sr. that were discovered in an archive box at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

The letters dated after Feb. 2, 1961 – the earliest date attributed to the Kenyan’s marriage to Ann Dunham – made no mention of Dunham or their son, the future president, which would have been to his advantage in his desperate effort, as the letters show, to obtain funding for his studies.

Barack Obama Jr.’s path to the White House began when he famously introduced himself to the world at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 as the product of an “improbable love” between a Kansas girl and a Kenyan goat herder, WND reports, 

Elsewhere, Obama has insisted that the love endured even when his father had to leave a wife and a 2-year-old child behind to pursue dreams at Harvard. In his autobiography, Obama indicated that if only Harvard would have offered enough money to support all three of them, as another school did, they could have stayed together.

But the discovered letters confirm WND’s reporting that Obama Sr. never lived with Dunham and she left Hawaii with her son only weeks after he was born.

Barack Obama Jr. said in his autobiography “Dreams from My Father” that the details of the marriage between his father and Dunham remained murky. Various biographies of Dunham, meanwhile, suggest the two were married only after she became pregnant, with Obama in “Dreams” claiming the two were married on an unspecified date in May 1960.

In his 2012 book “Barack Obama: The Story,” author David Maraniss claims the Kenyan married Dunham in Maui on Feb. 2, 1961, yet no official marriage certificate has ever surfaced.

That’s because they were never married.

Via WND:

No mention of Dunham

On Feb. 8, 1961, some five days after Maraniss claims Obama Sr. married Dunham, Obama wrote to Gordon Hagberg, the director of the African American Institute, at a DuPont Circle address in Washington different from Livingston’s address.

In the letter, the Kenyan thanked the African American Institute for the $500 “received for the second semester” and the $500 “received for last semester.”

The letter, applying for a scholarship in 1961 discussed in detail Obama’s transcript showing he was carrying a 3.7 grade point average, having just completed seven courses for 21 credit hours, receiving four grades of “A” and two grades of “B.”

But the letter, focused entirely on academic considerations, made no mention that he had married a Hawaii woman.

It’s a fact he could have referenced to obtain more funding, arguing he had taken upon himself the responsibilities of a student wife and possibly future children.

On April 1, 1961, Lee E. Winters Jr., an assistant professor of English at the University of Hawaii, wrote Hagberg a letter endorsing Obama Sr. for a continuing 1961 scholarship.

“Beyond purely academic pursuits, Mr. Obama has done an exemplary job of getting along with people and finding out about the local community and its varied nationalities,” Winters wrote, without any mention that Obama had done so well that he had just married a U.S. national residing in Hawaii.

“The only serious problem that Mr. Obama has faced in his life here has been financial,” Winters continued. “The cost of living in the Islands is fantastically high, and I sympathize with anyone who has brought any money here from elsewhere, as its purchasing power being so drastically decreased.”

The letters also miss some details. The Post reported that in one 1963 letter, the elder Obama applied for a grant to help pay for Harvard but left the form blank where it asked for his marital status and if he had any dependents. Obama had married Ann Dunham after they met at the University of Hawaii, and their son was born in 1961.

The letters end in 1964, when Obama returned to Kenya without his wife and child.

The Center invited Obama to see the documents in 2013, but the he never accepted the offer.

The New York Times reported that a senior White House official said Obama would be interested in seeing the letters after his term is over… so far, he has not.

Read the full story at WND.

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