Michelle Obama Research Paper

Michelle Obama

Born January 17, 1964, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is the wife of the

forty-fourth President of the United States, Barack Obama, and the first African-

American First Lady of the United States. She was born and grew up on the South Side of

Chicago and graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She is the

third First Lady with a postgraduate degree.

Michelle was born in Chicago, Illinois to Fraser Robinson III and Marian Shields

Robinson. She skipped the second grade and by sixth grade, she joined a gifted class at

Bryn Mawr Elementary School. She went to Whitney Young High Schoolwhere she was

on the honor roll four years, took AP classes, was a member of the National Honor

Society and served
as student council treasurer. She graduated from high school in 1981

as salutatorian and majored in sociology and minored in African American studies at

Princeton University, where she graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1985.

At Princeton, she challenged the teaching methodology for French because she

felt that it should be more conversational.
As part of her requirements for graduation,

she wrote a thesis called, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." She

obtained her Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1988 where she

participated in political demonstrations supporting the hiring of professors who are

members of minorities.

She met Barack Obama at their law firm, Sidley Austin and she was assigned to

mentor him while he was a summer associate. The relationship began with a business

lunch followed by a community organization meeting when he first impressed her. The

couple married in October 1992, and they have two daughters, Malia Ann and Natasha.

In May 2007, she reduced her professional responsibilities by 80% to support

Barack’s presidential campaign. Early in the campaign, she had limited involvement in

which she traveled to political events only two days a week and traveled overnight only

if their daughters could come along. She has made at least two campaign appearances

with Oprah Winfrey and writes her own speeches and speaks without notes. In 2007,

Michelle gave stump speeches for her husband's presidential campaign at
different

places in the United States.

Obama was involved in a trio of references to Barack Obama by Fox News that

were controversial. On June 11, 2008 while being interviewed with conservative

columnist Michelle Malkin about whether Michelle Obama had been the target of unfair

criticism, the network flashed a chyron that showed the message "Outraged liberals:

Stop picking on Obama’s baby mama," which basically said that Michelle Obama was

not married to the father of her children. Because Barack and Michelle Obama are

legally married to each other, the network realized the poor judgment of its own

producer in an official statement made to The Politico.

Michelle Obama is an oustanding woman of essence and an amazing mother of

2, all the while maintaining her duties as a wife and influential leader. She is indeed cut

out to be the First Lady of the United States.