The Woman With Integrity As Strong As Steel

“Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.” - From her 2012 commencement speech at Oregon State University

This is my last article for my Black History Month series and I wanted to dedicate it to America’s first African American First Lady, Michelle Obama. What I find so admirable about former First Lady Michelle Obama is her integrity. She has kept it intact throughout her entire run as First Lady. And there are many times when it would have been easy, and even justifiable, to “go low.” But she always goes high and that’s why she is one of my favorite first ladies. Another admirable characteristic about Michelle Obama is that she is very sure of who she is and what her values are. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey about the next generation of women, Michelle Obama discussed her confidence and how she came to a place of liking herself. That discussion with Winfrey focused on how young women and girls can feel more empowered and confident by genuinely liking who they are.

Michelle Obama was born on January 17, 1964 in Chicago, Illinois. Her parents and brother lived in South Shore. They were a tight knit family. Most impressive was Michelle Obama’s father. If you ever start to feel like you don’t want to get up for work or that life is feeling a little too hard, take a step back and put things into perspective. Michelle’s father, Fraser C. Robinson III, had multiple sclerosis for years and got up hours in advance every day to go to work and make a more than modest living as a pump operator just to support his family. If that’s not dedication and determination, I don’t know what is. She and her brother attended Bryn Mawr School (now called Bouchet Math and Science Academy). One important aspect of Michelle Obama’s childhood was that education always meant everything to her, and still does. She skipped the second grade, was accepted into a gifted program and took advanced biology courses. Michelle Obama describes her fear of getting the answers to questions wrong and not doing well in school as something that plagued her growing up. Being the highly intelligent and determined woman that she is, Michelle Obama did succeed in school, graduating from Whitney Young Magnet High School as class Salutatorian. Then she attended, first Princeton University, then Harvard Law School. Despite others’ doubts about her ability to get into Ivy League schools, Michelle Obama used that negativity to her own advantage; it was fuel to her fire.

She went off to college to do...well...astoundingly impressive things. At Princeton, Michelle created a reading program for the children of the school’s manual labor workers (How cool is that!?). Michelle was a sociology major with a minor in African American Studies at Princeton and earned her J.D. at Harvard. And that’s not all Michelle Obama did that’s ridiculously impressive. She joined the Chicago office of the law firm Sidley Austin as a junior associate specializing in marketing and intellectual property, was an assistant to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, became Chicago’s assistant commissioner of planning and development, then two years later was named executive director for the Chicago branch of Public Allies, a leadership-training program for young adults, and finally became an associate dean of student services at the University of Chicago, where she developed the school’s first community service program.

Now, she didn’t do all of this all at once, but she did achieve all of this in less than a decade.

What does make Michelle Obama relatable is her modesty and humanity. She has discussed in interviews her struggle to balance work and raising Malia and Sasha during a hectic period in her life. She had Malia in 1998 and Sasha in 2001. During that time she was working for the University of Chicago Hospitals and was named executive director of community relations and external affairs in 2002. After three years, she was promoted to Vice President and served on the boards of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. If you can only imagine what kind of balancing act that must have been. Michelle did scale back on her work, but it was mostly to start shifting her agendas to Barack Obama’s future legislative goals.

Michelle Obama has never stopped serving the public. During Barack Obama’s Presidency, First Lady Michelle Obama co-founded the Joining Forces program that expanded educational and employment options for veterans and raised awareness about the difficulties plaguing military families. During Obama’s second term, she formed the Reach Higher initiative to inspire young people to explore higher education and career-development opportunities. In her Farewell interview with Oprah Winfrey (Michelle does do other interviews, it’s just that I happen to like the ones with Oprah the best) and said that she was glad young girls, but specifically African American girls, were able to see a role model; an African American First Lady with an education (and a highly successful career).

To conclude this series, I want to say that choosing African American heroes and heroines to highlight during this short month was really difficult. I wanted to write about so many more people that have been important parts of our history. But of the people I did choose, I chose people that I genuinely admire, respect and am inspired by.