Character To The Fore

Michelle Obama, A Life

The Robinson family lived in an apartment on Chicago’s South Side. Michelle’s father worked for the city’s water department, tending a boiler. Her mother left her job and stayed at home until Michelle was in high school. Marian was a doting mother, but the family was dominated by Fraser. He had been a talented athlete as a boy, but was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his twenties. He never complained about his fate, but it made him even more determined to see his children succeed and to some extent he lived vicariously through their accomplishments. The Robinson household was all about education and discipline.

Craig was undeniably the young star of the family, bright and charming, able to ace tests with little study (today he is the men’s basketball coach at Oregon State). There was a touch of sibling rivalry, with Michelle in his shadow, and she had to study hard to earn her good grades and her father ’s praise. But it paid off - in the sixth grade she joined a gifted class at her elementary school. She went on Whitney Young Magnet High School, Chicago’s first magnet high school, a commute that took 90 minutes each way. She took advanced placement classes, was a member of the National Honor Society, and graduated in 1981 as salutatorian.

Craig went to Princeton University, and Michelle followed him there. Princeton was one of the more conservative Ivy League schools at the time, overwhelmingly white and privileged. It was a serious adjustment for a young woman from the inner city. “I remember being shocked by college students who drove BMWs. I didn’t even know parents who drove BMWs,” she told Vogue. There was a subtle attitude among a lot of the white students that their black classmates were affirmative- action recipients who didn’t really deserve to be there. The school held a special orientation for African-American and Hispanic freshmen, but it only served to reinforce their feeling of being outsiders.

Michelle was acutely sensitive to the racial tension and dichotomy, so much so that she made it the subject of her senior thesis - “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” The paper is now  under  lock and key, but, according to Newsweek, Michelle wrote that “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before” and that she felt like a visitor on the supposedly open-minded campus. “Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.” Michelle was part of an in-between generation of successful African-Americans - post the civil-rights movement but before real acceptance. In some ways this period was especially challenging, for these best and brightest were facing far more subtle expressions of prejudice. Her full-frontal acknowledgment and dissection of this truth is  revealing of her  character:  Michelle Obama is a one-woman, no-B.S. zone.

Two other aspects of Michelle’s character came to the fore at Princeton. Her feisty confidence was on display when she challenged the way that the school taught undergraduate French, arguing for a more conversational approach. And her practical, results-oriented attitude was evident in the way she worked to level  the playing field for less privileged children -  not by running for student government, but by helping to run a literacy program for kids from local neighborhoods.

All in all, Michelle’s Princeton career was a success - she graduated cum laude with a B.A. in sociology and was accepted at the Harvard Law School. Her pattern continued there; while she took part in demonstrations calling for the hiring of more minority professors, she also worked quietly to recruit more African-American students. She wasn’t prone to lofty oratory or self-aggrandizement. One of her professors, Charles Ogletree, has confirmed that for Michelle politics wasn’t about inspiration, it was about results. She was diligent and hardworking and earned her law degree in June
1988.

Michelle had no shortage of job offers, and she went to work at Sidley Austin, a prominent corporate law firm in Chicago. Her salary was impressive, and she was on her way to becoming a partner. But something was missing from the dry trademark and copyright cases she handled: “I didn’t see a whole lot of people who were just thrilled to be there,” she told Newsweek. “I met people who thought this was a good life. But were people waking up just bounding out of bed to get to work? No.”

Michelle thought about leaving the firm, but she stayed on. In the summer of 1989, she was asked to mentor a summer associate named Barack Obama. One day he walked up to her and said, “I think we should go out.” His confidence was disarming, but she initially resisted, thinking an office romance was inappropriate. He persevered, and she eventually consented to come to one of his community-organizing meetings, being held in a church basement.

Obama delivered one of his signature inspiring speeches, this one about closing the gap between what the world was and what it could be. The die was cast. “I was, like, ‘This guy is different’. He is really different, in addition to being nice and funny and cute and all that,” she explained to a reporter fr o m Newsweek. “He’s got a seriousness and a commitment that you don’t see every day.” She remembers thinking, “‘Well, you know, I’d like to be married to somebody who felt that deeply about things.”

Obama went back to Harvard, and Michelle continued at the law firm; they saw each other whenever he was back in Chicago.

Then, in 1991, two deaths rocked Michelle to the core. First her father succumbed to complications stemming from multiple sclerosis. Then a dear college friend died of lymphoma. Michelle knew the time had come to leave corporate law.

She resigned from the law firm and began mentoring children from the South Side, while she searched for a job in the public sector. It could not have been an easy call for a young woman from the South Side, who had worked as hard as she had to give up prestige and a path to wealth to contribute to her community.

Michelle wrote letters to non-profits and city agencies. One landed on the desk of Valerie Jarrett , deputy chief of staff to Chicago Mayor  Richard Daley. Jarrett says, “I interviewed Michelle, and an introductory session turned into an hour and a half. I offered her a job at the end of the interview, which was  totally inappropriate since  it was  the  mayor ’s  decision. She  was  so  confident and committed and extremely open.” Michelle was flattered by the offer, but wasn’t sure the job was right for her. She asked Obama, by then her fiance, to meet with Jarrett. He was impressed and counseled her to accept the offer. (Today, Jarrett is a senior advisor to President Obama.)

Jarrett became Michelle’s mentor, helping her understand how government works from the inside and introducing her to helpful people in both the public and private sectors. Michelle went to work untangling the complex web of rules, regulations, and paperwork that often strangles companies in their dealings with a large bureaucracy like the city of Chicago. It wasn’t the meaningful or exciting work Michelle yearned for, and the pay cut was significant, but she saw it as the first step in her new career in public service.

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