The Obama Timeline: 1961-2009 The following timeline presents the important aspects of Barack Obama’s life, from birth to the present. Every attempt has been made to present accurate information, names, and dates. If errors or significant omissions are noted, please feel free to contact the author at [email protected] . Although the timeline’s content will frequently change as events occur, the author will gladly send you a .pdf version if you would find that useful. NOTE: Considerable time and effort has gone into the research and creation of this timeline. This work is the intellectual property of the author and is fully protected by copyright law ©. Any non-profit re-posting or re- printing of this timeline without crediting the author (Don Fredrick at www.colony14.net) and without the consent of the author is prohibited. Any for-profit re-posting or re-printing of this timeline is prohibited. There are tentative plans for the publication of “The Obama Timeline” in book form in the summer of 2009. The book will cover the period of 1961 through Obama’s first 100 days in office. Watch www.colony14.net for news of publication and availability. 1961-1966 Hawaii Barack Obama Jr. is born on August 4, 1961 to Stanley Ann Dunham (1942- 1995). Ann Dunham (who understandably dropped her first name “Stanley,” given to her because her father wanted a male child) had married Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Sr. (1936-1982), on February 2, 1961. Obama, Sr., a pro- Soviet Marxist, was a Kenyan studying at the University of Hawaii. Dunham met him in a Russian language class in the fall of 1960, as he was starting his second year at the University and she was beginning her first. Obama, Sr., an Arab- African Muslim by birth, but an atheist by admission, already had two children with a woman in Kenya named Kezia (b. 1938). The senior Obama may or may not have been legally married to Kezia. Some have speculated that their marriage was only a tribal marriage, and therefore not legally recognized. Depending on his marital status in Kenya, Obama’s marriage to Dunham may or may not therefore have been legal. (Obama and Kezia eventually re-unite after he separates from Ann Dunham, and Kezia bears two more of his children.) After learning of the planned wedding to Dunham, Obama, Sr.’s father writes a long, angry letter to her parents saying he “didn’t approve of the marriage” and “didn’t want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman.” [1,3,7,289,299,324,2287,2292,2293] Barack Obama, Sr.’s Hawaiian education was sponsored partly by the Laubach Literacy Institute (LLI), which has links to the Nation of Islam, and which considers a socialist world without national borders one of its goals. A financial supporter of the LLI was Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who co-authored books with its founder, Charles Laubach. Kirk was also a friend of civil rights activist and black nationalist Malcolm “X” (Malcolm Little). It is likely that Malcolm X met Obama, Sr. during a 1959 visit to the Secretary General of the Kenya Federation of Labour, prominent Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, because Mboya and Obama were close friends. [408] Obama Sr. was able to attend the University of Hawaii also through the efforts of Mboya, who visited the United States in 1959 to obtain financial support for the American education of 81 Kenyan students. Presidential candidate Obama was incorrect in relating that his father was part of the “Kennedy airlift” of Kenyan students; John F. Kennedy was not sworn in as President until January of 1961, when Obama, Sr. was already in his second year at the University of Hawaii. Obama’s “JFK helped my father” story was likely intended to attach some of the “Kennedy mystique” to his candidacy. [561] Obama states he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. If that is the case, he was then both an American citizen and a British citizen at birth because his father was a citizen of the British East African Protectorate of Zanzibar. Because Zanzibar had, in 1961, not yet declared its independence from Great Britain Obama was, like his father, a British citizen under Section 32(1) of the British Nationality Act of 1948. Both Obama, Sr. and Obama, Jr. then automatically became citizens of Kenya when the independent nation was formed (from what had been Zanzibar) in 1963. Obama’s British citizenship automatically expired when he turned age 21. As a person born with dual citizenship, Obama is arguably not a natural born citizen and is ineligible to serve as President. The framers of the U.S. Constitution intentionally excluded dual citizens from becoming President because of possible split loyalties. [219,258,492,549] Kenyan Birth Allegations Some speculate that Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. Only one of Obama’s parents was American. If Obama was born in Kenya (or any country other than the United States), he cannot legally serve as President of the United States because he is not a “natural born citizen,” even though he may have become a “naturalized citizen.” Obama’s American citizen parent, Ann Dunham, had to have been a resident of the United States for 10 years, at least five of which were over the age of 14. Dunham did not meet that requirement (of the Nationality Act of 1940, revised June, 1952) until her 19th birthday in late November of 1961, almost four months after Obama was born. The law confers U.S. nationality on the infant of a foreign father only under certain circumstances; it would apply to “(7) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States, who prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years.” [801,2040,2462] A significant and understandable fuss has been made about Obama becoming the first African-American President. Obama is arguably not, however, “African- American.” His father, Barack Obama, Sr., is allegedly one-eighth African (on his mother’s side, from the Luo tribe in Kenya) and his father’s ancestry is purported to be Arabic. To the extent that is true, candidate Obama could arguably be referred to as “Arab-American” or “Arab-African-American.” Obama is certainly not – like many black Americans – the descendant of African slaves owned by white American slave-owners. If he has Arab ancestors Obama is, in fact, more likely a descendant of slave owners , because Arabs have for many centuries traditionally owned slaves and been active slave traders. Further, the names “Barack” and “Hussein” are of Arab origin. (There is insufficient publicly-available evidence to state with certainty the percentages of Obama’s national ancestries.) [513,514] Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham were granted a divorce on March 20, 1964 and therefore appear to have been legally married, although the State of Hawaii would certainly not have known of Obama, Sr.’s wife Kezia in Kenya when it issued a marriage certificate. (There are no known witnesses to a Dunham- Obama marriage, nor has any marriage certificate surfaced.) During the campaign Obama’s wife Michelle stated in an interview that Ann Dunham was “very young and very single when she had him (Barack Obama, Jr.)” In any event, Dunham was unmarried and not even age 18 – or possibly just barely 18 – when she became pregnant in late 1960. (Michelle Obama may have meant to say that Dunham was very young and very single when she became pregnant .) [4,6,8,10,324,352,564,772,2287] Stanley Ann Dunham Ann Dunham was, at various times, an atheist, an “Adlai Stevenson liberal,” a secular humanist, leftist social-activist, socialist, and student of cultural anthropology. She was reportedly an excellent debater at school, and allegedly excelled at defending the concepts of Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto.” [2,4,5,9,10,324,612,744,2289] In 1955, Ann Dunham had moved with her parents from Dorado, Kansas, to the Columbia City neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, where her father managed a furniture store – located down the street from the Regional Headquarters of the Communist Party USA. (It has been alleged that Ann Dunham’s father, Stanley Armour Dunham, purportedly a Marxist, had been suspected of espionage during World War II, and that Boeing has a 1944 security file on Dunham in connection with suspected sabotage of B-17 aircraft at its Wichita plant and the theft of B-29 blueprints. Those suspicions, if true, may have prompted Dunham to move his family from Kansas to Washington.) Ann Dunham attended Eckstein Middle School. The family then moved to Mercer Island in 1956 so that Ann could attend Mercer Island High School. The Mercer Island School Board was led by John Stenhouse (a British immigrant raised in China), who, according to his testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, was a member of the Communist Party USA. Dunham’s teachers included communists Jim Wichterman, whose assignments included the reading of “The Communist Manifesto.” The hallway between Wichterman’s class and that of another teacher, Val Foubert, whose reading assignments included Margaret Mead’s writings on homosexuality, was known as “anarchy alley.” (Foubert also had his students read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” the monumental pro-individual, pro- liberty, anti-collectivist novel which, if she read, Dunham clearly did not understand and which certainly was not allowed to influence her son’s view of the world.) Dunham graduated from high school in 1960.