FLOTUS: First Ladies of the United States

Michelle Obama Part I

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to former president Barack Obama.

Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. In her early legal career, she worked at the law firm Sidley Austin where she met her future husband. She subsequently worked in nonprofits and as the associate dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago. Later she served as, vice president for Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Michelle married Barack in 1992 and they have two daughters.

Obama campaigned for her husband's presidential bid throughout 2007 and 2008, delivering a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She has subsequently delivered acclaimed speeches at the 2012, 2016, and 2020 conventions. As first lady, Obama served as a role model for women and worked as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating. She supported American designers and was considered a fashion icon. Obama was the first African-American woman to serve as first lady.

After her husband's presidency, Obama's influence has remained high. In 2020, she topped Gallup's poll of the most admired woman in America for the third year running.

Family and Education

Early life and ancestry

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born on January 17, 1964, in Chicago, Illinois, to Fraser Robinson III (1935–1991), a city water plant employee and Democratic precinct captain, and Marian Shields Robinson (b. July 30, 1937), a secretary at Spiegel's catalog store. Her mother was a full-time homemaker until Michelle entered high school.

The Robinson and Shields families trace their roots to pre-Civil War African Americans in the American South. On her father's side, she is descended from the Gullah people of South Carolina's Low Country region. Her paternal great-great-grandfather, Jim Robinson, was born into slavery in 1850 on Friendfield Plantation, near Georgetown, South Carolina. He became a freedman at age 15 after the war. Some of Obama's paternal family still resides in the Georgetown area. Her grandfather Fraser Robinson, Jr., built his own house in South Carolina. He and his wife LaVaughn (née Johnson) returned to the Low country from Chicago after retirement.

Among her maternal ancestors was her great-great-great-grandmother, Melvinia Dosey Shields, born into slavery in South Carolina but sold to Henry Walls Shields, who had a 200-acre farm in Clayton County, Georgia, near Atlanta. Melvinia's first son, Adolphus T. Shields, was biracial and born into slavery around 1860. Based on DNA and other evidence, in 2012 researchers said his father was likely 20-year-old Charles Marion Shields, son of Melvins's master. They may have had a continuing relationship, as she had two more mixed-race children and lived near Shields after emancipation, taking his surname (she later changed her surname).

As was often the case, Melvinia did not talk to relatives about Dolphus's father. Dolphus Shields, with his wife Alice, moved to Birmingham, Alabama, after the Civil War. They were great-great-grandparents of Michelle Robinson, whose grandparents had moved to Chicago. Other of their children's lines migrated to Cleveland, Ohio, in the 20th century.

All four of Robinson's grandparents had multiracial ancestors, reflecting the complex history of the U.S. Her extended family has said that people did not talk about the era of slavery when they were growing up. Her distant ancestry includes Irish, English, and Native American roots. Among her contemporary extended family is Rabbi Capers Funnye; born in Georgetown, South Carolina. Funnye is the son of her grandfather Robinson's sister and her husband, and he is about 12 years older than Michelle. Funnye converted to Judaism after college. He is a paternal first cousin once removed.