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| Michelle Obama, A Life |
It’s the summer of 1860 on the Friendfield plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina - coastal low country whose snake- and mosquito-infested fields produce half of America’s rice crop. A young African slave by the name of Jim Robinson is working there. Owned by another man, Robinson has no freedom, no choices, no opportunities. It’s hard to imagine his dreams include a vision of his great- great-granddaughter as First Lady of the United States, living in the White House, hosting state dinners, an inspiration to her own country, and one of the most admired women in the world. But it happened. Her name is Michelle Obama - and we can be sure that Jim Robinson would be as proud of his descendant as she is of him.
After the Civil War, Robinson became a sharecropper on the plantation. He married and in 1884 had a son, Fraser, who lost an arm to an infection when he was 10. A local white man took a liking to the boy and got permission from his family to raise him. Although he didn’t send Fraser to school, his own children went, and education was stressed in the household. This made a lasting impression on Fraser - who grew up to be a successful small-time entrepreneur - and education has been a cornerstone of the Robinson family ever since.
Fraser married and had a son. Fraser Jr., Michelle’s grandfather, was a smart child, but opportunities were few - when it came to racial equality the south was regressing in the aftermath of Reconstruction. He moved to Chicago as part of the great black Diaspora in the early twentieth century, when millions of blacks from the rural South moved to northern cities in search of opportunity. He took a job at the post office, and met and married LaVaughn Johnson. Their son, Fraser Robinson III, was born on August 1, 1935. He was a handsome, intelligent man, and in 1960 he met and married the Marian Shields, then a secretary at Spiegel’s catalogue store. Marian’s family came from Alabama and her great-great-grandfather was the child of a white man. Fraser and Marian’s first child, Craig, arrived in 1962. On January 17, 1964, Michelle came into the world - the fruit of a uniquely American family tree, one whose roots run deep and strong.
Source: Michelle Obama, A Life
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