Description:

The earliest known ALS by Barack Obama extant. A letter to his African brother soon before their first in-person meeting, written while working as a community organizer to benefit minorities on Chicago's South Side

BARACK OBAMA (b. 1961) Extremely rare and early Autograph Letter Signed, "Barack," on a 4" x 6" postcard, [Chicago], March 17, [1986] to his half-brother Malik Abongo "Roy" Obama and his wife Mary in Washington. Additionally signed "OBAMA" in the address panel and bearing a Chicago, March 19, 1986 cancellation. Light diagonal crease, some very minor marginal wear, else fine condition.

Obama's letter reads in full: "Roy & Mary — Sorry to be so silent of late; work has been tough and my time has been tight. Still, I hope both of you know that I think of you often and am curious about how Washington D.C. is treating you. I've had a somewhat discouraging time since I came back from vacation; I'm responsible for organizing an about 250,000 person community were where unemployment is high and hope is low. My inexperience is showing, but I hope that by the end of this year I will have a fairly good perspective on the possibilities and limits of this type of work. So, I assume that you're respective jobs are coming along allright. Send some word by mail or phone when you get a chance. Love Barack."

Two years after graduating from Columbia, The Developing Communities Project, a church-based community organization on Chicago's South Side, hired Obama as director in June 1985. During his tenure, he helped set up a job training program, a tenant's rights organization and a college preparatory tutoring program. He resigned his position in May 1988 in preparation to enter Harvard Law School that fall.

According to Obama's memoirs, he first began corresponding with his half-brother soon after he reunited with his half-sister Auma who had came to visit him in Chicago in early 1986. Although in a published interview, Abongo had noted that they first met in person in 1985, it is more likely the meeting, in which Obama flew from Chicago to Washington, D.C. to visit over a weekend, occurred in early to mid 1986 (Obama, Dreams of My Father, 1995; Maliti, "Obama's Brother Chooses Life in Slow Lane" Associated Press, October 26, 2004).

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