"...In July 1960 some 280 African students awarded scholarships in the United States stood poised for an extraordinary opportunity. Four years of college would vault them into the educated elites of their countries and provide crucial intellectual infrastructure as their nations moved toward independence. The students had scholarships; their communities had raised money for expenses. Just one obstacle remained: passage to America. And as the start of the school year neared, their journey seemed in jeopardy. An organization dedicated to helping these students, the African-American Students Foundation (aasf), did not have the funds to bring them to the United States. Wealthier foundations said their money was committed elsewhere. When the aasf appealed to the U.S. State Department for help, officials consistently rejected their pleas."
Senator John F. Kennedy and the Kenyan nationalist leader Tom Mboya speak to reporters after their meeting on July 26, 1960, in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Mboya had asked Kennedy to intercede with the State Department for funds to transport African students to the United States. Instead, Kennedy secured funds from a charity his family controlled. Photograph by Boston Herald American in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY - AIRLIFT
In Nairobi Mboya and Kiano joined forces with a third Kenyan, Kariuki Njiiri, to identify Kenyan students who would form the nucleus of the first “African Airlift.” They awarded scholarships to 39 students who, along with an almost equal number of candidates who had made private arrangements, filled the 81 seats available on the charter plane. Through a fund-raising effort headed by Belafonte, Poitier, and baseball legend Jackie Robinson, aasf raised $35,000 from eight thousand contributors for the transatlantic transportation. How important was the fund raising? The charter aircraft alone cost approximately $330 per person in a nation where Africans earned a per capita income of $84 a year. More than five thousand exuberant Kenyans gathered at the airport to send off the students.[25]
On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, black leaders recognized the need for aid to African education. With the encouragement of American civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, the Kenyan Tom Mboya organized the African-American Students Foundation (aasf), which awarded Kenyan students scholarships for study in the United States. This photograph shows the Kenyan students arriving at Idlewild Airport in New York in September 1959 as participants in the first “African Airlift.” Courtesy Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Jackie Robinson Papers.
The baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who backed efforts to bring African students to the United States, greets the first “African Airlift” arrivals in New York in September 1959.
Barack Obama wrote that his father “had been selected by Kenyan leaders and American sponsors to attend a university in the United States,” but a list of the students who landed in New York on September 9, 1959, does not contain the name of the elder Obama. Tom Shachtman, working in the African-American Students Foundation (aasf) papers for a book on the airlifts, has found that the elder Obama came in 1959 with support from the aasf but appears to have been routed a different way as he made his way to the University of Hawaii.
Cold warrior for racial equality.LINK
Airlift students withTom Mboya (fourth right), Gloria and Gordon Hagberg (second and third right respectively).
"...Their cook was Hussein Onyango Obama, none other than the paternal grandfather of President Obama. Gloria recalls the times Hussein’s son, the youthful student Barack Obama Sr, would visit their house, announcing: “I’ve come to see the old man!”
Although the young Obama Sr. left for the University of Hawaii before the first formal student airlift..."
Tracing Obama Snr’s steps as a student at Maseno School.LINK
"...Okanda removes a brown card from one of them. "This one belonged to Barack Obama Sr. He joined the school in 1950 and left in 1953," he explains.
Obama Sr — Index No 3422 — joined the school with his elder brother, Joseph, who left in 1951 for unexplained reasons.
Obama Sr is said to have come from Alego-Ng’iya in Central Nyanza. His age was not indicated.
The students were taught sciences, art and technical subjects, including carpentry and tailoring.
Otula says Obama Sr went straight to the US from Maseno, to start his academic tour..." --------------------------
"...Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, an international literacy pioneer, was named in Barack Obama's book, Dreams from My Father, as a key supporter of his father's dream to come to the U.S. She helped to line up scholarships, including the one awarded by the Laubach Literacy Fund..."