Obama's father among secret files on Kenyan students

[ellisonz]

Mr Obama senior came to America in 1959 and began a degree in business administration

US officials complained Kenyan students were becoming "anti-white" in the year Barack Obama's father enrolled at university, previously secret files released at the National Archives in Kew reveal.
18 April 2012 Last updated at 04:05 ET
By Sanchia Berg Today programme

US President Barack Obama wrote with pride of his Kenyan father's studies in the US in his memoir Dream From My Father.

He wrote how he had been "selected by Kenyan leaders and American sponsors to attend a university in the United States joining the first large wave of Africans to be sent forth to master Western technology and bring it back to forge a new, modern Africa".

But British colonial authorities in Kenya, and the US State Department had concerns about the first large wave of Kenyan students, of which Barrack Obama Sr was part, according to the records released by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The file lists the Kenyans, who began studying in the US in 1959, including one "OBAMA Barrack H", who enrolled at the University of Hawaii. At the age of 23 he was the institution's first African student.

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17748754

[chollybocker]

1. ...aaand so begins the election season.

[JDPriestly]

2. Somehow I doubt that Barack Obama's father was anti-white.

I base my doubt on the fact that he married Barack Obama's white mother -- whose family was from Kansas no less.

Kenya was viewed as a potentially violent place in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were just beginning their democratic institutions. The Mau-Maus had revolted only a few years before Barack Obama was born.

That is why I find the idea that Barack Obama's mother would have gone to Kenya to give birth to be an absurd joke.

[unc70]

3. Kansas and Seattle and Hawaii and ...

Don't think he was anti-white, but her family being originally from Kansas has little relevance.