The Post & Email Requests Access to Obama Sr. Letter Collection

“IN A BOX,” OR NOT?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jul. 3, 2016) — On June 18, 2016, the day before Fathers’ Day, The New New York Times published an article under the byline of Rachel L. Swarns reporting that a collection of letters reportedly generated by Barack Hussein Obama Sr. between 1958 and 1964 had been discovered at The New York Public Library by archivist Christine McKay.

The article is titled, “Letters by and about Barack Obama’s Father” and subtitled “Words of Obama’s Father Still Waiting to be Read by His Son.”  The letter collection reportedly resides at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture within the New York Public Library.

The letters, depicted in images in the story, pertain to Obama Sr.’s quest for scholarship money to attend college in the United States, although he reportedly did not finish high school in Kenya. “He was ambitious and impetuous, a 22-year-old clerk who could type 75 words a minute and translate English into Swahili. But he had no money for college. So he pounded away on a typewriter in Nairobi, pleading for financial aid from universities and foundations across the Atlantic,” Swarns wrote.

Obama Sr. indicated his date of birth as June 18, 1934, that he was a British citizen, and that he was married with one child.  Swarns reported that his alleged “multiple marriages” received scrutiny from “immigration officials,” which is substantiated by documents released by the U.S. State Department in July 2010 to two FOIA requesters, Christopher Strunk and Kenneth Allen.

A date of birth for Obama Sr. has also been reported as June 18, 1936 (page 7).

Similar documents obtained by Heather Smathers report that Obama Sr. entered the U.S. on August 9, 1959.

Swarns did not report that Obama Sr.’s student visa was reportedly not renewed after Harvard University raised the issue of his alleged inappropriate involvement with female students both there and elsewhere.  In a memo dated April 27, 1964 (page 21), Obama Sr. reportedly said that he was separated from an American wife, with an examiner, M.F. McKeon, stating that she was currently “in the Philippines” although from Honolulu.

While Obama Sr. reportedly did not mention his relationship with Stanley Ann Dunham and his child on an application for financial aid to attend Harvard, the marriage and son were acknowledged on Obama’s request to extend his stay in the U.S. in 1964 (page 14).

For its article, The Times quoted Dr. Kahlil Gibran Muhammad, Schomburg Center Director, as having said of the collection, “The papers are rich; they tell a fascinating, traditional, self-made man’s story.  There’s a reason to bear witness to the personal legacy that is here.”  Muhammad is reportedly a native of Chicago’s South Side, which Barack Hussein Obama II represented in the Illinois state senate before successfully running for the U.S. Senate and then the White House.

A biography of Dr. Muhammad reports that “Muhammad is the great-grandson of Elijah Muhammad,” the latter of whom is the founder of the Nation of Islam.

After finally arriving in Hawaii through a circuitous route, Obama Sr. reportedly began his studies at the University of Hawaii in the fall of 1959.

At the time of this writing on Sunday, The New York Times is featuring stories related to the Obama Sr. story titled “Celebrating Black Culture with a Careful Eye” dated June 27 and “‘Roots’ for a Black Lives Matter Era” published on May 29.

Obama II has reportedly not seen the letter collection.  As reported by Swarns, “So for now, the records reside in Box 214 of the Phelps Stokes Fund collection in the Schomburg’s temperature-controlled, off-site storage facility. Whenever Mr. Obama is ready, the center’s director said, his father’s file will be waiting.”

On June 20, The Post & Email contacted the Schomburg Center through its website contact form to inquire about scheduling a viewing of the letter collection so as to write an exclusive article.  In our contact, we mistakenly referred to the library as a museum.

Last name: Rondeau
First name: Sharon
Email: editor@thepostemail.com
City: Canterbury
State: CT
Question:
On Saturday, a New York Times article reported that a box of letters written by Barack Obama Sr. had been found by an archivist at your museum.  Are those available to the public for viewing?  Could I obtain an interview with the person who discovered them?

Thank you very much.

Sharon Rondeau, Editor
The Post & Email
www.thepostemail.com
P.O. Box 113
Canterbury, CT  06331-0113
List any resources you have already consulted:
The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/nyregion/letters-by-and-about-barack-obamas-father.html

When submitting a request to view materials in the Center, the requester must agree to a lengthy disclaimer which includes the statement that not all requests for access to materials are granted.

We received the following response the same day, which reads:

Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 15:13:48 -0400
Subject: Fwd: Rondeau
From: schomburgreference@nypl.org
To: editor@thepostemail.com
CC: schomburgarchives@nypl.org

Dear Sharon,

Thanks for contacting the Schomburg Center.  I’m forwarding your email to the Manuscripts, Archives & Rare Book Division as the letters are contained in the Phelps-Stokes Collection.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

(212) 491-2218

As we did not hear from the Manuscripts, Archives & Rare Book Division, on June 29 we contacted the division directly, from which we received the following response:

From: