Michelle Obama
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...
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