Michelle Obama

by Peter Slevin

  “WE HAVE A BLACK FAMILY in the White House. Amazing!” said Maya Angelou at a BET awards ceremony after Michelle introduced her. To Michelle, Angelou was a hero and muse whose affirming words “lifted me right out of my own little head.” After the poet’s death in 2014, the first lady spoke of what she had learned about authenticity and self-worth from the writer, dancer, singer, teacher, and short-order cook from Stamps, Arkansas. She said Angelou, born in 1928, “celebrated black women’s beauty like no one had ever dared to before—our curves, our stride, our strength, our grace.” In an era when black women faced “stifling constraints,” Michelle said, Angelou “serenely disregarded all the rules.… She was comfortable in every inch of her glorious brown skin.”

  In her eulogy, delivered at a memorial service in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Michelle painted herself anew as “a little black girl from the South Side of Chicago.” She described her feelings of loneliness in Ivy League classrooms and “long years on the campaign trail where at times my very womanhood was dissected and questioned.” It pleased her when people called her authentic. And when they did, she thought of Angelou. She said the poet’s work allowed her and many others “just to be our good old black-woman selves. She showed us that, eventually, if we stayed true to who we are, then the world would embrace us.”

  Acknowledgments

  This book, much like the Obama presidency, got its start in Iowa. In 2007, Michelle Obama rolled from Davenport to Iowa Falls to Fort Dodge to Rockwell City, telling her story and talking up her husband’s candidacy. She spoke of Barack’s life and her own, and asked listeners to believe in him the way she did. I followed her through Iowa and, as the campaign gained momentum, I watched her in New York and Texas, South Carolina and Indiana, and, in the final days of the race, Ohio. Before and after the election, I explored Michelle’s history and her Chicago career while spending considerable time writing about Barack’s own trajectory. For those early forays from The Washington Post’s Chicago bureau, I am grateful to the Post editors who humored me and to the politics-writing colleagues who made me wiser.

  As I watched at close range, it became clear that Michelle merited a book that placed her at the center of her own narrative, not simply as the wife of the famous Barack, nor simply as first lady. When I embarked on the project, two friends at the Post steered me to Andrew Wylie and Scott Moyers. After Scott returned to Penguin, Andrew proved savvy and steadfast, the shrewdest ally a writer could want. Thanks to Jacqueline Ko at the Wylie Agency for answering many questions. At Knopf, Erroll McDonald believed in the idea from the start and, through thick and thin, never wavered. I am grateful to Knopf’s talented team, who guided the book to the finish, including Nicholas Thomson, Cassandra Pappas, Claire Bradley Ong, and Carol Devine Carson.

  At Northwestern University, where I have been fortunate to teach since leaving the Post, I gained greatly from the labors of a lively and dedicated team of undergraduate researchers. Rhaina Cohen and Yvonne Kouadjo came to know Michelle’s story almost as well as I did, adding details and smart thinking to chapter after chapter. I was fortunate to have Benjamin Purdy’s considerable contributions for two years and, in the homestretch, the work of Emily Jan, who paid particular attention to the photographic record; plus Ashley Wood and Yoona Ha. Many thanks to two deans of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Bradley Hamm and John Lavine, and former associate dean Mary Nesbitt. Their support and flexibility contributed mightily to my ability to finish this project in something short of a light-year. As I completed the book, the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research offered a welcome haven and access to Harvard’s libraries.

  So many colleagues at Northwestern offered conversation and words of encouragement. Heartfelt appreciation to Medill friends Cecilia Vaisman, Ava Greenwell, Rick Tulsky, Jack Doppelt, Judy McCoy, Emily Withrow, Kari Lydersen, Charles Whitaker, and Louise Kiernan. Also Stephan Garnett, Alex Kotlowitz, Beth Bennett, Josh Meyer, Loren Ghiglione, Mei-Ling Hopgood, Karren Thompson, Douglas Foster, and many other terrific colleagues and students. Beyond Medill, I was pleased to be able to turn for guidance on Chicago history and culture to Northwestern professors Henry Binford, Mary Pattillo, and Darlene Clarke Hine.

  Dozens of people shared their stories and their wisdom about Michelle and Barack Obama and the world they inhabit. For their reflections and their trust, I thank them. I owe a deep debt to reporters and media figures who asked thoughtful questions of the Obamas, some as long as twenty years ago, others quite recently. Their work enriched the narrative immeasurably. A special shout-out to colleagues who opened their notebooks and shared unpublished interviews, including Michael Powell of The New York Times, Scott Helman of The Boston Globe, David Mendell and John McCormick, late of the Chicago Tribune, and Lauren Collins of The New Yorker.

  This book would not be the same without the rigor and sage advice of friends who broke into their busy lives to read the manuscript. For that, I thank Robin Givhan, Rachel Swarns, David Remnick, Peter Baker, Kevin Merida, and Dexter Filkins. Each of them not only plowed through the evolving biography but kept up helpful and long-running conversations along the way. Martha Biondi, expert in the history of campus politics, graciously read the Princeton and Harvard chapters. Any errors of fact or interpretation, naturally, are mine alone.

  Truth be told, there was never a day when I did not look forward to working on this project and solving one riddle or another. Countless times, a kind word or a generous suggestion from a friend was a welcome balm. I much appreciate support from those who spoke and those who mostly listened, including Bill Hewitt, Krissah Thompson, Geraldine Baum, David Von Drehle, John Rogers, Elizabeth Shogren, Cathy Lasiewicz, Mellody Hobson, Chris Westefeld, John Audley and Andrea Durbin. I am grateful to Russ Canan, Sheryll Cashin, Blaine Harden, Margot Singer, Connie Schultz, Esther Fein, Steve and Rena Reiss, Tom Ricks, Masha Lipman, Joe Day, John Westefeld, John Heilemann, and Steve Mufson. In Evanston, I thank Andrew Johnston—so generous with his expertise about photography—Tracy Van Moorlehem, Deb Turkheimer, Dylan Smith, Dylan Penningroth, Ian Hurd, and all the Lincoln and Nichols friends. Special thanks to Mike Klearman, who always managed to talk of this project with a gleam in his eye.

  Every so often, a thick envelope of news clippings would arrive from my mother, Katherine Day Slevin, who first lived in Washington in the 1930s and remembers cutting through the White House grounds to get from Pennsylvania Avenue to the National Mall. Well into her nineties, my mother has a keen eye for details that reveal character, a trait she shared with my late newsman father, Joseph R. Slevin. To the two of them, and their generous spirit, I owe more than I can convey. I thank my siblings, Michael Slevin, Jonathan Slevin, and Ann Peck, for their love and encouragement, and Ann Masur for being a laser-eyed reader of the manuscript and a great support to our family. A bevy of Slevins, Masurs, and their kin offered invariably lively conversation and good cheer.

  I recognized how much this project had become part of our family’s life when Kate asked a question at dinner one summer evening in 2013: “Does anyone know what’s happening July seventeenth?” Without hesitating, six-year-old Milo said, “Michelle Obama’s half-birthday?” He was right about the date, although Kate had a different event in mind. Isaac and Milo learned their facts and asked thoughtful questions, even as they surely wondered when I would finally finish. Their older brother, Nik, was unfailingly enthusiastic while cheering from a greater height and distance. Kate Masur contributed a historian’s expertise and a scholar’s sensibility. Ever smart and stalwart, ever cool under pressure, a great reader and a greater friend, she sharpened my thinking and rallied the troops, staying true to the end.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  1 “Maybe you feel like no one has”: Michelle Obama, Academies of Anacostia graduation, June 11, 2010.

  2 “We live in a nation”: Michelle Obama, remarks to the National Congress of Black Women, September 30, 2007.

  3 “So the world has”:
“Running Mates: Michelle Obama One on One,” Good Morning America, ABC News, May 22, 2007.

  4 “So many people have no idea”: Verna Williams, interview with author.

  5 “the balance between”: Michelle Obama, remarks at University of California–Merced, May 16, 2009.

  6 “You do not want”: Trooper Sanders, interview with author.

  7 “I think that girl was”: Michelle Obama, 106 and Park, BET, November 13, 2013.

  1 | CHICAGO’S PROMISE

  1 “The gutsiest guy”: Dan Maxime, interview with author.

  2 “What would my father think”: Michelle Obama, Harlem, June 26, 2007.

  3 “the glue”: Capers Funnye, interview with author.

  4 “I remember his compassion”: South Side Girl, Democratic National Committee video, August 26, 2008.

  5 “I could calculate”: Richard Wright, Black Boy, p. 252.

  6 “depressed and dismayed me”: Ibid., p. 261.

  7 “I knew that this machine-city was”: Ibid., p. 262.

  8 overcrowding forced many black schools: St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, p. 202.

  9 In one direction was a library named for: Ibid., p. 379; and Adam Green, Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940–1955, pp. 58–59.

  10 “The capital of black America”: Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Migration and How It Changed America, p. 64.

  11 “And they risked serious reprisals”: John Paul Stevens, “The Court and the Right to Vote: A Dissent,” New York Review of Books, August 15, 2013.

  12 “The whites in power”: Rachel L. Swarns, American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama, pp. 156–160.

  13 “a young man destined for better things”: Ibid., p. 79.

  14 “He wanted a different kind of life”: Ibid., p. 80.

  15 He set up pins: Ibid., pp. 92–93.

  16 James moved: Ibid., p. 83.

  17 The policy, known as redlining: Beryl Satter, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America.

  18 three-fourths of Chicago’s black population: Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race & Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960, pp. 4–5.

  19 they charged rents far higher: Ibid., p. 29.

  20 Three black infants died: Drake and Cayton, p. 202.

  21 By 1945, more than half of the Black Belt: Ibid., p. 206.

  22 “They faced what other African American families faced”: Barack Obama, speech, Washington, September 18, 2007.

  23 LaVaughn again took up housecleaning: Swarns, p. 93.

  24 John, who died as a baby: Nomenee Robinson, interview with author.

  25 “separated, without dependants [sic]”: Swarns, p. 97.

  26 She relied especially on two older women from Georgetown: Swarns, p. 100.

  27 the first African American woman: Scott Young, Moody Bible Institute, email, April 26, 2013.

  28 “Everything educational, they got it”: Swarns, p. 100.

  29 “I just loved that little toy”: Nomenee Robinson, interview.

  30 “Don’t you dare go out there again”: Ibid.

  31 His mother knew the location: Nomenee Robinson, interview.

  32 named for a friendly Italian woman: Swarns, p. 101.

  33 “He happened to hear me screaming”: Nomenee Robinson, interview.

  34 He left that chore to his wife: Craig Robinson, A Game of Character: A Family Journey from Chicago’s Southside to the Ivy League and Beyond, p. 27.

  35 He worked on the horse-drawn cart: Nomenee Robinson, interview; Michelle Obama, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America, p. 12.

  36 “We had to be hustlers”: Nomenee Robinson, interview.

  37 In the mid-1940s: Ibid.

  38 “Her style was very open”: Richard Hunt, interview with author.

  39 “escaping and coming to the land of the free”: Ibid.

  40 “The teachers might suggest”: Ibid.

  41 “You’d hardly know he was around”: Reuben Crawford, interview with author.

  42 He saw Fraser: Nomenee Robinson, interview; family remembrance prepared for Fraser Robinson’s memorial service, Chicago, March 10, 1991.

  43 “He was secure with himself.”: Nomenee Robinson, interview.

  44 “Make your own little list”: Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on the Make, pp. 45–46.

  45 “We were taught the history”: Charlie Brown, interview with author.

  46 “faced with abhorrence of everything”: Margaret T. G. Burroughs, “What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black?” Chicago: M.A.A.H. Press, 1968.

  47 At first, she thought: Margaret Taylor Burroughs, Life with Margaret: The Official Autobiography, pp. 72–73.

  48 “An agitator by profession.”: Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, p. 135.

  49 “When you lived in Chicago back then”: Brown, interview.

  50 “If one word”: Bernard Shaw, interview with author.

  51 “You had to do better”: Crawford, interview.

  52 “an absolute conviction”: Funnye, interview.

  53 He “encouraged striving”: Ibid.

  54 Eldridge Cleaver and Anne Moody: Adam Green, p. 198.

  55 “I couldn’t get Emmett Till”: “The Murder of Emmett Till,” http://www​.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/sfeature/sf_remember.html.

  56 One thought running through her head: The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., “Appreciation: Rosa Parks,” Time, October 30, 2005.

  57 once you put money in a bank: Nomenee Robinson, interview.

  58 It was an initiative of the Dining Car Workers: National Register of Historic Places registration form, National Park Service, October 2011.

  59 In the immediate postwar years: James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff, eds., The Encyclopedia of Chicago.

  60 The complex opened: National Register of Historic Places registration form, National Park Service, October 2011.

  61 “the opening of a new frontier”: Mary McLeod Bethune, “Chicago’s Parkway Gardens Symbol of Growing Economic Unity and Strength,” Chicago Defender, December 9, 1950.

  62 He wanted not only to provide: Richard M. Leeson, Lorraine Hansberry: A Research and Production Sourcebook, p. 6.

  63 “hellishly hostile”: Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, p. 51.

  64 “it is a play that tells the truth”: Anne Cheney, Lorraine Hansberry, p. 55.

  65 “We ain’t never been that poor”: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, p. 143.

  66 “one of America’s greatest stories”: Scott Feinberg, “Tonys: A Moment in the Sun for ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ Nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson,” Hollywood Reporter, May 27, 2014.

  67 Fraser joined the army: Andrew Robinson, interview.

  68 “You fell out for formation”: Joe Hegedus, interview with author.

  69 He was awarded a good conduct medal: U.S. Army records.

  70 He would complete his service: U.S. Army records.

  71 As African Americans continued to migrate: Christopher Manning, “African Americans,” in Grossman, Keating, and Reiff, eds.; Nicholas Lemann, p. 70.

  2 | SOUTH SIDE

  1 They broke up: Marian Robinson, unpublished interview with Scott Helman, 2008.

  2 “philosopher in chief”: Marian Robinson quoted in Craig Robinson, A Game of Character: A Family Journey from Chicago’s Southside to the Ivy League and Beyond, p. xi.

  3 “If it can be done”: Jim Axelrod, “In the Family,” CBS Sunday Morning, March 1, 2009.

  4 “I come from a very articulate”: Michelle Obama, “Reaching Out and Reaching Back,” InsideOut, University of Chicago Office of Community and Government Affairs, September 2005.

  5 they would raise seven children: Michelle Obama, remarks to National Council of La Raza, July 23, 2013, New Orleans.


  6 As adults, they both learned to read: Rachel Swarns, American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama, pp. 150–151.

  7 “The women in my family were dressmakers”: Scott Helman, unpublished interview with Marian Robinson, 2008.

  8 He then found work as a plasterer: Swarns, p. 88.

  9 With Purnell and his sister: Ibid., p. 72.

  10 “When I finally came to Chicago on May 9, 1930”: Dempsey Travis, An Autobiography of Black Jazz, p. 240.

  11 “You learn to sleep through jazz”: Laura Brown, “Michelle Obama: America’s Got Talent,” Harper’s Bazaar, October 13, 2010.

  12 “By calling a chef, drummer and jazz aficionado”: Robinson, p. 16.

  13 He was denied better jobs and pay: Susan Saulny, “Michelle Obama Thrives in Campaign Trenches,” New York Times, February 14, 2008.

  14 “I had a father who could be very angry about race”: Marian Robinson, unpublished interview with Michael Powell, 2008.

  15 “Segregation and poverty have created”: National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, pp. 1–2.

  16 “All of us know what those conditions are”: Lyndon Baines Johnson, speech, The White House, July 27, 1967, http://millercenter.org/president/speeches​/speech-4040.

  17 “This difference has its source”: Pierre de Vise, Chicago’s Widening Color Gap, p. 18.

  18 In raw numbers: Ibid., pp. 75–76.