I watched the video by Spike Lee entitled “Four Little Girls”. The video is about an unforgivable tragedy that affected all Americans. I have written about the film in another blog which is posted right after this one. I also just finished this biography about Barack Obama and I wanted to put these blogs together. I hope you will eventually see the connection between the book about the man, Barack Obama, and the film about what happened to the little girls. This man may help make a difference so an incident like this would never happen again. Barack Obama has experienced blatant racism and is working to make this a united America where little girls can grow up and have families, no matter who they are. Like so many other people, I had very little knowledge of where this man came from and what he could possibly offer to the American people as a President. After reading “Working to Make a Difference” by Marlene Targ Brill I feel that I have a better grasp on who Obama is and I would like to share the information I gathered from this book with everyone else.

Barak Obama was born in Hawaii and his parents called him Barry, his mother was a Kansas native, and his father, a Kenyan African native. His mother was Caucasian and was named Stanley Ann after her father, because he wanted a son. Barry’s parents met at the University of Hawaii while both were studying the Russian language. Barry’s father returned to Kenya after graduation because of a school contract he had with his African country. His father also returned because he had other wives and children in Kenya to care for, which was legal there.. Barry was only two years old when his parents divorced and his father left to return to Kenya, and he only saw his father once more at ten years old, when he returned to Hawaii to visit. His father died in a car accident in Kenya while Obama was in college at Columbia. Obama did not get to visit Kenya and meet his relatives until right before he went to Harvard University.

Barry’s mother married an Indonesia man and they moved to Jakarta for two years until Barry’s mother decided her son’s education was lacking and returned him to Hawaii to live with her parents and to finish high school. When Barry completed his high school education, he went to California to college for two years and then transferred to Columbia University in New York to finish his degree in political science. It was while he was at Occidental College in Los Angeles that he connected with an international black movement, and reclaimed his Kenyan name, Barack. After graduation from Columbia he worked three years in Chicago before he was accepted to Harvard Law School where he was the first African American to receive the honor of becoming president of the Harvard Review, the highest honor for law students. It was at Harvard that he met his wife, Michelle; they both received law degrees from Harvard and then returned to Chicago to live and work. In 1996 he became an elected politician taking advantage of an opportunity offered by an Illinois State Senator to take her place. In his seven years in the Illinois Senate he accomplished many things on behalf of working families. From this point on, Obama has moved forward with determination and strength that shows in his present day debates and orations on why he should become our next president. Quoting from Marlene Brill’s book, her statement of how Obama recalls his life journey to the Senate is very strong. “He marveled at how a boy raised in two countries with roots in a third and who attended schools run by three different religions could have come so far. But then what better way is there to understand what is important to every group of people”.

Are we finally going to have a president that can unite our country peacefully and make us a people of one nation? I think the possibility is so uplifting that I feel hope for mankind. There will always be those who insist on bringing us back to ugly roots, but my belief that man is basically good will always abide with me and give hope for a great united future.