This was a well-publicized event in Hawaii. The people in the picture are welcoming him. Obama, Sr. was pictured in local papers upon his arrival and upon his graduation in 1962 (the same year he left for Harvard).
During his 1959 trip to the United States, the 29-year-old Mboya raised enough money for scholarships for 81 young Kenyans, including Obama Sr., with the help of the African-American Students Foundation. Records show that almost 8,000 individuals contributed. Early supporters included baseball star Jackie Robinson , who gave $4,000, and actors Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier.
There was enormous excitement when the Britannia aircraft took off for New York with the future Kenyan elite on board. After a few weeks of orientation, the students were dispatched to universities across the United States to study subjects that would help them govern Kenya after the departure of the British. Obama Sr. was interested in economics and was sent to Hawaii, where he met, and later married, a Kansas native named Ann Dunham. Barack Jr. was born in August 1961.
Among the other students on the first airlift was Philip Ochieng, who went on to become a prominent Kenyan journalist. In a 2004 article for the Nation, Kenya's leading newspaper, Ochieng remembered Obama Sr. as "charming, generous and extraordinarily clever," but also "imperious, cruel and given to boasting about his brain and his wealth." Obama Jr. paints a similar portrait in his best-selling 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," describing his father as exceptionally gifted but also "wild," "boastful" and "stubborn."
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According to a letter on file in the Mboya papers at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, "most" of Obama Sr.'s early expenses in the United States were covered by an international literacy expert named Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who had traveled widely in Kenya. Kirk wrote to Mboya in May 1962 to request additional funds to "sponsor Barack Obama for graduate study, preferably at Harvard." She said she would "like to do more" to assist the young man but had two stepchildren ready for college.
Source: Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father, Washington Post, March 30, 2008
From article you posted: "In a 2004 article for the Nation, Kenya's leading newspaper, Ochieng remembered Obama Sr. as "charming, generous and extraordinarily clever," but also "imperious, cruel and given to boasting about his brain and his wealth." Obama Jr. paints a similar portrait in his best-selling 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," describing his father as exceptionally gifted but also "wild," "boastful" and "stubborn."
How in the heck would he know this since he only met him for a few days, weeks, when he was 11 years old. He is just voicing what others have said.
Sorry for the late response power went out here yesterday and I am just now catching up. Earlier I had posted a link to an aticle in ‘The Honolulu Adverstiser’ which has a 1959 picture of Obama Sr along with quotes from an article about him which appeared after his 1962 graduation but before he left for the mainland. The 1962 article is mentioned in one of Obama’s books as something he had found when he also supposedly found his birth certificate. However in his book he said the article was from the ‘Honolulu Star Bulletin’ NOT the ‘Honolulu Advertiser’. You can see the picture of Obama Sr taken in 1959 and also exerpts of his 1962 interview here:
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Feb/10/ln/FP702100346.html
Also interesting to note that there are only two locations given of where Sr lived while going to school in Hawaii and neither is the address mentioned in the birth announcement. The address listed in the birth announcement is over 7 miles away from the University of Hawaii while the Atherton YMCA and St Louis Heights are both within one mile of the University.