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Great find and comment by AlbertaFriend:

Today I have spent more time than I should looking into Frank Montero who is mentioned in the Cora Weiss article above. I’ve found quite a lot but in my searching I came across this:

http://hooverinstitutionla.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html

This article contains a letter from 0 Sr. dated May 29, 1962 to Tom Mboya. It is part of a collection of papers from a William X. Scheinman who was the president of the African-American Students’ Foundation(the air-lift sponsors) and also became a close friend of Mboya.

The letter describes how 0’s education in America has progressed. He says he has completed his Bachelor’s Degree and his Master’s Degree and has obtained the highest honors awarded in U.S. universities. This letter’s date is less than 1 year after 0 Jr.’s birth and even before the date we have used for his departure from Hawaii—June 1962. How in the world is this possible? At this point in time he hasn’t even been in U.S. for 3 full school years.

AlbertaFriend's post
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This is the blog post from Hoover Archivists' Musings dated February 2010:

In the late 1950s, Scheinman, an American businessman, and Mboya, a politician, an advocate for democratic development, and a leader of labor and independence movements in Africa, became fast friends. Mboya, knowing education was the key to independence and a vibrant democracy, was looking for a way to get young Africans (mainly Kenyans) a university education in the United States and Canada.

With Scheinman’s help, connections, and financial support, Mboya created the African American Students Foundation: the vehicle that helped thousands of Africans to come to America.

One of those young students who came to the United States under the umbrella of the African American Students Foundation was none other than Barack Obama Senior.

Both Scheinman’s and Mboya’s papers are housed in the Hoover Institution Archives. In processing those papers, we ran across thank-you letters from the senior Obama to Mboya. Here are several excerpts from one of those letters:

Barack Obama Sr. to Tom Mboya, May 29, 1962, Tom Mboya Papers, Box 41, Hoover Institution Archives.

Mboya went on to become a minister in the cabinet of Kenya’s first independent government in 1963, and many believe the history of Kenya would have been very different had Mboya not been assassinated in 1969.

Hoover Archivists' Musings

FN: Posting here as well as on the other thread. This was my reply to AlbertaFriend on same thread:

Great find AlbertaFriend--- I don't think this has been posted before. We need to find someone to look at those letters; I wrote a comment asking that the letters be posted in the interest of history (fat chance?). Below is the standard fare. However, we should now look upon the letter you posted as a fixed reference point.
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"After all, there was another Obama in the world. Perhaps he would take after him," Abercrombie recalled. Obama graduated with honors in 1962. Earlier that year he was offered a scholarship to pursue a doctorate at Harvard, which provided enough money for Obama but not for his wife and son, according to the candidates' memoir. Obama decided to go anyway.

In a May 1962 letter to Mboya, Obama waxed excitedly about his plans for Harvard. He made no mention of his second wife and new son, but Mboya, who had recently been appointed Kenya's minister of labor, was aware that Obama had a child in Hawaii, and was not happy about Obama's plans to leave his son behind, according to Susan Mboya. In one of a series of letters the two men exchanged, Mboya chastised his protégé, Susan Mboya said. She declined to release the letters. But Tom Mboya eventually relented, according to his daughter, "for he saw that the opportunity for Obama was very great."

* * *

Obama arrived in Cambridge on a brisk fall day in 1962 and swiftly established himself. Then 29, Obama rented an apartment in a rooming house in the shadow of Central Square, which soon became known as a hangout for African students. And when newcomers from Kenya arrived in town, "they knew they could go there and spend a night on the floor and get some information," recalled Paul Nyangani, 66, an uncle of Tom Mboya's and friend of Obama's. There is little record of Obama at Harvard. He received a master's degree in economics in 1965, and did not complete a PhD. But several of his colleagues remember him well.

Frederick Okatcha, a professor of psychology at Kenyatta University who attended Yale University in the mid 1960s, recalls that a group of Africans attending universities on the East Coast would gather in New York, often at the former West End Bar near Columbia University. "Most Kenyans then would talk about the political positions they wanted to hold when they got back," said Okatcha. "Obama was more intellectual."

Although Obama had always enjoyed his beer, he was developing a taste for Johnnie Walker Black that earned him the nickname 'Mr. Double Double.' After Obama ordered his customary double Scotch, "He would shout in that big deep voice, 'Waiter, another double!' said Leo Odera Omolo, a journalist and drinking buddy of Obama's, who lives in Kisumu, a port city in Kenya.

During his time at Harvard, Obama met another woman. Her name was Ruth Nidesand, a teacher and a person of some means. Obama confided in friends that he was attracted to Nidesand in part because, "she was able to pay for some of the social activities that he could not afford," said Omolo. Obama had continued to write Dunham in Hawaii and inquire about their son, but relations between the two deteriorated and they divorced in 1964. The following year, Obama returned to Africa with Nidesand and the couple were soon married.

SOURCE

Thinking out loud and breaking this letter down
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As you know I have been able to finish my B.A.(hon.)degree and done my M.A. within three years only as contrasted to the normal four years for a B.A. and one to two years for M.A.

I have therefore been able to cut on at least two years for my B.A. and Master’s.

Further during this period I have been able to get the highest academic honours that anyone can get in America and as for the University of Hawaii I was the only foreign student to get.

I have been awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Honours Award, the Phi Kappa Phi Honours Award, the Omnicrom Delta Kappa Phi Honours Award all for high attainment in scholarship and leadership. These are the highest honours that anyone can get in the U.S.A. for high academic attainments.

Barack Obama Sr. to Tom Mboya, May 29, 1962 (Tom Mboya Papers, Box 41, Hoover Institution Archives)
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By May 29, 1962 Obama has finished his education in America-—a BA degree and a MA degree. He says he has done this in THREE years instead of “the normal four for a BA and one to two years for an MA.”

1959-60 - Univ of Hawaii
1960-61 - Univ of Hawaii
1961-62 - Harvard

Even though the date of the letter is not contained in the portion published on the blog, what he does say and what seems now beyond dispute is that he got a BA & an MA in THREE YEARS and presumably finished this education before May 29, 1962.