Barack Obama, Sr.

Barack Obama, Sr.

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (/ˈbærək huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; 18 June 1936 − 24 November 1982) was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the father of U.S. President Barack Obama. He is a central figure of his son's memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995). Obama married in 1954 and had two children with his first wife. He was selected for a special program to attend college in the United States, where he went to the University of Hawaii. There in 1960 he met Stanley Ann Dunham, a native of Kansas. They married in 1961 and divorced three years later, after having a son, Barack Hussein Obama, named for him. The elder Obama went to Harvard University for graduate school, earning an M.A. in economics, and returned to Kenya in 1964.

Later that year, he married Ruth Beatrice Baker, a Jewish-American woman with whom he had developed a relationship in Massachusetts. They had two sons together before separating in 1971 and divorcing in 1973. Obama first worked for an oil company, before beginning work as an economist with the Kenyan Ministry of Transport. He gained a promotion to senior economic analyst in the Ministry of Finance. Among a cadre of young Kenyan men educated in the West in a program supported by President Tom Mboya, Obama had conflicts with Mboya's successor, Jomo Kenyatta, which adversely affected his career. He was fired and blacklisted in Kenya, finding it nearly impossible to get a job. Drinking heavily, Obama suffered two serious car accidents and died in a third in 1982.