825perhaps he sensed that he would have to create a meaning-
ful life through achievement of his own.
Whatever the reason, he did achieve. In 1985, after
graduating from Columbia, he took a job as a community
organizer in Chicago and established job training pro-
grams in schools, fought to remove asbestos in housing
projects, and campaigned against drug dealers. Then he
was admitted to Harvard Law School, named to the
Harvard Law Review, and elected its president, the first
black to hold this prestigious position. Afterwards he
returned to Chicago to write a book; it became Dreams
from My Father(1995), a memoir from which much of this
account is taken. ( The publisher has refused permission for
any quotes from that book to appear in this one.) He
taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago
while working for a black law firm with strong connections
to Chicago politics. In 1996 he ran for the Illinois state leg-
islature and won. It was the beginning of a meteoric ascent
in American politics that culminated in Obama’s election
as president in 2008.His first two years at Occidental College in California
were more of the same. He did little work. He was nevertheless
popular with nearly everyone, navigating among different
social groups with ease.“He was a hot, nice, everything-going-
for-him dude,” one friend recalled.“You couldn’t help but like
him.” But issues of race weighed upon him and his black
friends. After some of them teased him for using the name
Barry, he began to ask people to call him Barack.
After his sophomore year, Obama transferred to
Columbia University in New York. Denied campus housing as
a transfer student, he lived in cheap apartments in Harlem.
Then something changed. He studied, ran three miles a day,
often fasted on Sundays, gave up drinking and drugs (ciga-
rettes proved more difficult), and kept a journal to record his
thoughts and poetry.
Late in the fall of his senior year, he received a phone
call from Africa. His father was dead. He had been drunk and
drove his car into the stump of a gum tree. Even in death, his
father remained a mystery to Obama.
Obama later dreamt that he was on a long bus ride that
ended up at a jail. He went in and saw his father in a cell,
naked but for a cloth around his waist. As Obama entered
the cell, his father teased him for being so thin. Obama
embraced him and wept. His father then said that he had
always loved his son. Barack suggested that his father
accompany him from jail; but his father replied that it would
be best if the boy left alone.
When Obama awakened, he was crying.
Perhaps young Barack had at last reconciled with his
absent father, enabling him to march toward his destiny with
the singular purposefulness that became his trademark. Or
Questions for Discussion
■President Barack Obama identifies himself as black. Do
you agree? What is the definition of race in the contem-
porary United States?
■What explains Obama’s transition from being an indif-
ferent student in high school and college to a disci-
plined achiever?Obama at Occidental College in 1980.