Black father, white mother

The couple were married on 21 February 1961, a month after John F Kennedy took the presidential oath of office. Less than six months later, they celebrated the birth of a child, Barack Hussein Obama Jr.

He was the product of what was then a rarity in post-war American society: a mixed-race marriage. As Barack Obama himself wrote, his father was as "black as pitch", while his mother was as "white as milk".
Certainly, there are clues to Obama's personality in the unorthodox backgrounds and personalities of his parents. His father had come to the University of Hawaii as its first black student, and became the president of the International Student Association. He was known for his rich speaking voice, strong opinions and a magnetic personal charisma.

His mother was an only child, who was christened Stanley Ann because her parents yearned for a boy. As a schoolgirl and student, she was known for her quick wit, feisty intelligence and expansive vocabulary.

The marriage did not last long, but then Barack Sr hardly fitted the mould of the reliable husband. Before arriving in Hawaii, he had been married already to a local Kenyan woman, who mothered four of his children (he lied to his new wife, Ann, that he had arrived in Hawaii a divorcee).

Then, when Barack Jr was still a toddler, he decided to take up a scholarship at Harvard, turning down a more financially generous offer from New York University which would have supported the whole family. So Ann and young Barry, as he was then known, remained in Hawaii. And thereafter, Barack Obama Sr made only one more appearance in his son's life, visiting him in Hawaii when he was aged 10.


There was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalogue
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father
The break-up of his parents' marriage set-up the next episode in Barack Obama's life: his years in Indonesia.

Ann met another foreign student at the University of Hawaii, an Indonesian by the name of Lolo Soetoro. They lived as a family for two years in Hawaii, before leaving for Jakarta in 1967.

Within six months, Barry had learnt Indonesia's language and was being awoken by his mother at 4am each morning so that she could give him additional English lessons before school. Perhaps his thirst for self-improvement, and his fierce self-criticism, stem from those pre-dawn lessons.

There were other formative influences. His step-father was a Muslim, though he followed a brand of Islam, according to Barack, "that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths".