JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTRY.LINK
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.
Footnote:
[25] Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Jackie Robinson appeal letter, Aug. 24, 1959, box 3, Robinson Papers; Smith, “East African Airlifts of 1959, 1960, and 1961,” 25–43. 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. Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York, 1995), 9; “Eighty-One Kenya Airlift Students Arrived New York Sept. 9th 1959,” box 3, Robinson Papers; Tom Shachtman telephone interview by James H. Meriwether, Aug. 19, 2008, notes (confirmed via e-mail by Shachtman) (in James H. Meriwether’s possession).
From your Journal of American History link:
“[Tom Schachtman] 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.”
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From Tom Schachtman’s book, Airlift:
“As far as can be determined from incomplete records, Mrs. Roberts and Miss Mooney paid his fare to Hawaii and provided a partial scholarship.
Mboya, while unable to transport the twenty-three-year-old, did put him on the AASF list to receive one of the handful of scholarships contributed by the former baseball star Jackie Robinson, which the Scheinman foundation was administering, and encouraged him to look to the AASF for further help if needed, which he later did. “
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From LLI (now ProLiteracy.Org):
With a letter of recommendation provided by Mooney and initial financial support from Laubach Literacy International 5, Obama’s application to study economics at the University of Hawaii was accepted. He was admitted on a scholarship and started his studies in the fall of 1959.
During his time in Hawaii and in need of support as a full time student, Obama reached out to Laubach Literacy International for additional financial assistance. In the spirit of the organizational belief that it could help “build tomorrow’s teams in centers and abroad” the organization awarded Obama a Fund Scholarship to support to his United States studies.
The record of this funding was noted in the organization’s 1961 Annual Report: “Barack Obama, from Kenya, is in an undergraduate program at the University of Hawaii. An honor student, Barack may come later to Syracuse for literacy journalism.” 6 Because of her deep belief in his skills and abilities, Mooney also provided personal financial assistance to Obama to support his tenure at the University of Hawaii.