| Michelle Obama was born as Michelle Robinson January 17th, 1964, in Chicago. Her circumstances were very humble. Her dad, Frasier Robinson, was a municipal water plant worker & precinct captain for the Democrats. Her mom, Marian Robinson, was an entry-level worker at Spiegel's, a mail order store. Michelle was raised in the South Shore area of South Chicago. Though working class, she benefited from very strong middle class values and an uncharacteristic two-parent household. Both Michelle and her brother Craig Robinson (sixteen months her senior), excelled academically. Michelle traces her ancestry to pre-War of Independence Southern blacks; many of her relatives still live in South Carolina. Michelle attended high school at Whitney Young, where she made honor roll for four years in a row. She then studied advanced placement classes, and was a student council treasurer. She graduated secondary School in 1981, and then majored in sociology and African American studies at Princeton, where she graduated in 1985. While at Princeton University, she assailed the teaching style of French for being nonconversational. Obama also wrote a thesis titled, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" , which would later become a source of contraversy during her husband’s campaign for president. She received her law degree from Harvard in 1988. At Harvard University, she took part in demonstrations demanding the hiring of minority professors. |
