| | | First marriage[ edit]While attending a Russian language class, Dunham met Barack Obama Sr., the school's first African student. [19] [20] At the age of 23, Obama Sr. had come to Hawaii to pursue his education, leaving behind a pregnant wife and infant son in his home town of Nyang'oma Kogelo in Kenya. Dunham and Obama Sr. were married on the Hawaiian island of Maui on February 2, 1961, despite parental opposition from both families. [6] [21] Dunham was three months pregnant. [6] [16] Obama Sr. eventually informed Dunham about his first marriage in Kenya but claimed he was divorced. Years later, she would discover this was false. [20] Obama Sr.'s first wife, Kezia, later said she had granted her consent for him to marry a second wife, in keeping with Luo customs. [22]
On August 4, 1961, at the age of 18 years, 8 months and 6 days, Dunham gave birth to her first child, Barack Obama II. [23]Friends in the state of Washington recall her visiting with her month-old baby in 1961. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] She took classes at the University of Washington from September 1961 to June 1962, and lived as a single mother in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle with her son while her husband continued his studies in Hawaii. [18] [25] [29] [30] [31] When Obama Sr. graduated from the University of Hawaii in June 1962, he was offered a scholarship to study in New York City, [32] but declined it, preferring to attend the more prestigious Harvard University. [21] He left for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would begin graduate study at Harvard in the fall of 1962. [20] Dunham returned to Honolulu and resumed her undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii with the spring semester in January 1963. During this time, her parents helped her raise the young Obama. Dunham filed for divorce in January 1964, which Obama Sr. did not contest. [16] In December 1964, Obama Sr. married Ruth Baker, a Jewish American of Lithuanian heritage; they were separated in 1971 and divorced in 1973 after having two sons. In 1965, Obama Sr. received a MA in economics from Harvard. [33] In 1971, he came to Hawaii for a month and visited his son Barack, then 10 years old; it was the last time he would see his son, and their only major personal interaction. In 1982, Obama Sr. was killed in a car accident.
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