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Michelle Obama

When Michelle Obama became First Lady of the United States in 2009, she had traveled a long way from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. Still she pledged to remain grounded and focused on her children and their well-being. She also expressed interest in focusing attention on women's efforts to balance work and family. First Lady Obama commented that "My first priority will always be to make sure that our girls are healthy and grounded. Then I want to help other families get the support they need, not just to survive, but to thrive."

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born on January 17, 1964, to Marian and Fraser Robinson in the South Side of Chicago where she and her older brother Craig grew up in a one-bedroom apartment. Craig and Michelle shared a "bedroom," which was the living room split down the center. The family was a close-knit one that stressed the importance of honesty, hard work, and education. Fraser worked as a city pump operator as well as a Democratic precinct captain. Although he suffered from multiple sclerosis, he rarely missed a day of work and taught Michelle and Craig to value achievement as a result of hard work. Marian was a stay-at-home mother until Michelle went to high school to maintain a steady household which included teaching both children to read by the age of four.

Michelle excelled in school, skipping second grade and entering a gifted program in sixth grade. She moved on to Chicago's first magnet school for gifted children called the Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, graduating as salutatorian in 1981. Although originally discouraged from applying, she then followed Craig to Princeton University. There she focused her studies on Sociology and African American Studies and graduated cum laude in 1985. Michelle faced further discouragement when she applied to Harvard Law School, but once again she excelled in her studies and graduated in 1988.

After graduating from Harvard, Michelle returned to Chicago and joined the law firm Sidley and Austin. While working there in the summer of 1989, she was assigned to be the adviser to Barack Obama, a new summer intern. Originally Michelle said no when Barack asked her on a date, but finally she gave in; he proposed two years later. They were married on October 3, 1992, and had two daughters, Malia (1998) and Natasha, known as Sasha (2001).

In 1992, shortly after her father's death, Michelle decided that corporate law was not her ideal lifelong occupation. She decided to move into public service, and she started as an assistant to Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley. She then became the assistant commissioner of planning and development for the city of Chicago. In 1993, Michelle began working as the executive director for the non-profit, Public Allies. This AmeriCorps program, initiated during the administration of President Bill Clinton, helped young adults develop the skills and training needed for careers in public service. Michelle joined the University of Chicago in 1996 as the associate dean of student services where she developed the school's first community service program. She became the executive director of community and external affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals in 2002. Her role as executive director ended in 2005 when she became vice president of community relations and external affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

When Barack Obama announced his decision to run for president in 2007, Michelle decided to cut back her work hours to balance her husband's campaign with their family life. Although she campaigned for her husband, traveling across the country giving speeches to thousands of Americans, she limited her time away from home to two days a week. Her mother helped with childcare while the Obamas were campaigning. Once Barack Obama won the election, the family began to prepare for the move to the White House. Both the Obamas talked about the trade-offs of being in the public eye while still trying to maintain some privacy. They emphasized the need to keep life consistent and steady for their daughters. Malia and Sasha attend Sidwell Friends School, a private Quaker day school. When Obama took office, Sasha was a second-grader at the school's Bethesda, Maryland, elementary school campus, and Malia was a fifth-grader at its middle school campus in Washington, DC. Michelle's mother moved to the White House with the Obamas to help ease the transition.

As First Lady, Michelle Obama was the subject of much focus and speculation. The Obamas received more than the usual amount of attention because of being the first African American family to live in the White House. The press covered the choice of a family dog, and contests were held to choose the First Lady's Inaugural gown. As the Obama family settled into their new life in Washington, DC, the Obamas protected the privacy of their daughters, the first young children to live in the White House since President John Kennedy and his family in the early 1960s. As First Lady, Michelle focused on childhood nutrition, exercise (Let's Move campaign), military families, and LGBT rights. She was a popular First Lady who was also influential as a partner to President Obama. 

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Michelle Obama

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 4, 2021 | Original: November 6, 2009

Michelle Obama (1964-), the wife of 44th U.S. president Barack Obama, served as first lady from 2009-2017. An Ivy League graduate, she built a successful career, first as a lawyer, and then in the private sector, which she maintained throughout her husband’s early political career. Concerned about the effect the campaign would have on their young daughters, Michelle was initially reluctant to support the idea of her husband’s run for the presidency. Despite her initial misgivings, she proved to be an effective surrogate for him on the campaign trail. After her husband’s election, she chose a number of causes to support; advocating for support for military families and encouraging healthy eating to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity. As a young mother, a fashion icon and the first African American first lady, Michelle Obama became a role model to many Americans.

WATCH: Michelle Obama

Michelle obama's childhood.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born on January 17, 1964, in Chicago , Illinois , to parents Marian and Fraser Robinson. Although Fraser’s modest pay as a city-pump operator led to cramped living in their South Shore bungalow, the Robinsons were a close-knit family, with Michelle and older brother Craig pushed to excel in school. Both children skipped the second grade, and Michelle was later chosen for a gifted-student program that enabled her to take French and advanced biology courses.

Making the lengthy daily trip to attend Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, Michelle became student council treasurer and a member of the National Honor Society before graduating as class salutatorian in 1981. She then followed her brother to Princeton University, where she created a reading program for the children of the school’s manual laborers. A sociology major with a minor in African-American studies, she explored the connections between the school’s black alumni and their communities in her senior thesis, graduating cum laude in 1985.

Career and Life Before Becoming First Lady 

After earning her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1988, Michelle joined the Chicago office of the law firm Sidley Austin as a junior associate specializing in marketing and intellectual property. Assigned to mentor a summer intern named Barack Obama , she deflected his initial romantic advancements before they began dating. They were engaged within two years, and married at the Trinity United Church of Christ on October 3, 1992.

Michelle left corporate law in 1991 to pursue a career in public service, enabling her to fulfill a personal passion and create networking opportunities that would benefit her husband’s future political career. Initially an assistant to Chicago mayor Richard Daley , she soon became the city’s assistant commissioner of planning and development. In 1993, she was named executive director for the Chicago branch of Public Allies, a leadership-training program for young adults. Moving on to the University of Chicago as associate dean of student services, she developed the school’s first community-service program.

When Obama decided to run for Illinois state senator in 1996, Michelle proved a disciplined campaign aide by canvassing for signatures and throwing fundraising parties. However, their victory presented the family with new challenges; following the births of daughters Malia (1998) and Sasha (2001), Michelle often had to juggle the demands of work and child-rearing alone with her husband tending to business in the state capital of Springfield.

Successful despite the difficulties, Michelle was named executive director of community relations and external affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals in 2002. She was promoted to vice president after three years, and served on the boards of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, but eventually scaled back her work hours and commitments to support Obama’s entry into the U.S. presidential race.

Tenure as First Lady 

Initially criticized for her candor, Michelle soon proved an asset on the campaign trail with her knack for delivering relatable stories about her family. In addition to becoming the first African American first lady upon Obama’s Election Day victory in 2008, she became the third with a post-graduate degree.

Michelle sought to tie her own agendas to her husband’s larger legislative goals, notably targeting the epidemic of childhood obesity while the Affordable Care Act was being created. In 2009, she worked with local elementary school students to plant a 1,100-square-foot vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House . The following year she launched the Let’s Move! initiative to promote healthy eating and physical activity.

In 2011, Michelle co-founded the Joining Forces program to expand educational and employment options for veterans and to raise awareness about the difficulties plaguing military families. After helping Obama win a second term in office, she formed the Reach Higher initiative to inspire young people to explore higher education and career-development opportunities.

Continuing the family theme of her campaign speeches, the first lady stressed the importance of remaining a diligent parent and brought her mother to live with her in the White House. She was also recognized for an ability to connect to younger generations by remaining attuned to popular culture. Embracing the use of social media, she encouraged fans to follow her progress on her Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, and proved willing to bring her messages to audiences by appearing in humorous sketches online and on television.

WATCH: The Best Photos of Obama's Presidency

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Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama is a lawyer, writer, and the wife of former U.S. President Barack Obama. Prior to her role as first lady, she was a lawyer, Chicago city administrator, and community outreach worker.

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1964-present

Latest News: Michelle Obama Wins Second Grammy Award

Talk about a talented former first family!

Michelle Obama, 60, was not in attendance in Los Angeles, where the award was announced during the Grammys pre-show on Sunday afternoon. She previously won in the same category for the audio version of her 2018 memoir Becoming .

Barack previously received two Grammys for Best Spoken Word Album for Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream .

Quick Facts

Career in law and public service, marriage to barack obama and daughters, campaigning for her husband, causes and accomplishments as first lady, notable speeches, obama foundation, books and podcasts, partnership with netflix, who is michelle obama.

Michelle Obama is a lawyer, writer, and philanthropist who was the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She was the first Black woman to hold this position. Michelle is the wife of America’s 44 th president, Barack Obama . As first lady, Obama focused her attention on social issues such as poverty, healthy living, and education. She won a Grammy Award for her 2018 memoir, Becoming , which discusses the experiences that shaped her, from her childhood in Chicago to her years living in the White House.

FULL NAME: Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama BORN: January 17, 1964 BIRTHPLACE: Chicago, Illinois SPOUSE: Barack Obama (1992-present) CHILDREN: Malia and Sasha ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born on January 17, 1964, in Chicago. Her father, Fraser Robinson, was a city-pump operator and a Democratic precinct captain. Her mother, Marian, was a secretary at Spiegel’s catalog store but later stayed home to raise Michelle and her older brother, Craig. At 21 months apart in age, Craig and Michelle were often mistaken for twins .

The Robinson family lived in a small bungalow on Chicago’s South Side. Michelle and Craig shared quarters, sleeping in the living room with a sheet serving as a makeshift room divider. They were a close-knit family, typically sharing meals, reading, and playing games together. She later said of her childhood: “I had a very stable, conventional upbringing, and that felt very safe to me.”

Raised with an emphasis on education, both Michelle and her brother learned to read at home by age 4. Both skipped the second grade. By the sixth grade, Michelle was taking classes in her school’s gifted program, where she learned French and completed accelerated courses in biology. Michelle went on to attend Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, the city’s first magnet high school for gifted children, where, among other activities, she served as the student government treasurer. She graduated in 1981 as class salutatorian.

Following in her older brother’s footsteps, Michelle applied for Princeton University. Some teachers tried to dissuade her from applying, telling her she would never get accepted: “Some of my teachers straight up told me that I was setting my sights too high.” Nevertheless, she was accepted, and ultimately graduated cum laude in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. Michelle went on to study law at Harvard Law School, where she took part in demonstrations calling for the enrollment and hiring of more minority students and professors. She was awarded her juris doctor in 1988.

After graduating law school in 1988, Michelle worked as an associate in the Chicago branch of the firm Sidley Austin. Her focus was marketing and intellectual property. In 1991, she left corporate law to pursue a career in public service, working as an assistant to Mayor Richard Daley and then as the assistant commissioner of planning and development for the City of Chicago. In 1993, Michelle became executive director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a nonprofit leadership-training program that helps young adults develop skills for future careers in the public sector.

In 1996, Michelle joined the University of Chicago as associate dean of student services, developing the school’s first community-service program. Beginning in 2002, she worked for the University of Chicago Hospitals as executive director of community relations and external affairs. In May 2005, Michelle was appointed vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she continued to work part-time until shortly before her husband’s inauguration as president. She also served as a board member for the prestigious Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Michelle met Barack Obama in 1989 at the Chicago firm Sidley Austin. He was a summer intern, and Michelle was assigned to him as an adviser. They were among the few Black people working at the firm at the time. Initially, Michelle refused to date Barack, believing that their work relationship would make the romance improper. She eventually relented, however, and the couple soon fell in love.

Barack described their early relationship as an “opposites attract” situation because he had a different background and a more adventurous personality than Michelle. After two years of dating, Barack proposed, and the two married on October 3, 1992.

The couple has two daughters: Malia , born in 1998, and Sasha , born in 2001. Both Michelle and Barack have stated that their personal priority is their children. The Obamas tried to make their daughters’ world as “normal” as possible while living in the White House, with set times for studying, going to bed and getting up. “My first priority will always be to make sure that our girls are healthy and grounded,” Michelle has said . “Then I want to help other families get the support they need, not just to survive, but to thrive.”

Obama had long known her husband might pursue a political career and said in as early as 1996: “I’m very wary of politics. I think he’s too much of a good guy for the kind of brutality, the skepticism.” She opposed Barack’s decision to run for the U.S. House of Representatives but nevertheless campaigned for him during his unsuccessful primary campaign in 2000. She first caught the eye of a national audience while at her husband’s side when he delivered a high-profile speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Barack was elected as U.S. Senator from Illinois that November.

As her husband’s political role pushed the family into the spotlight, Michelle was publicly recognized for her no-nonsense campaign style as well as her sense of fashion. In May 2006, she was featured in Essence magazine as one of “25 of the World’s Most Inspiring Women.” In September 2007, Michelle was included in 02138 magazine as number 58 in “The Harvard 100,” a yearly list of the school’s most influential alumni. She also twice appeared on the cover of Vogue and made the Vanity Fair best-dressed list two years in a row as well as People magazine’s 2008 best-dressed list.

Michelle had reservations about Barack’s decision to run for president, too; she worried about how it would affect their daughters. Those concerns proved unfounded, as Michelle said they “could care less” about the campaign. In 2007, Michelle scaled back her own professional work to attend to family and campaign obligations during Barack’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination. When they were out on the trail, they would leave their daughters with Michelle’s mother, Marian. Barack won the nomination and later defeated Republican challenger John McCain in the general election to become the 44 th president of the United States . He was inaugurated on January 20, 2009.

When her husband sought reelection in 2012, facing a challenging race against Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney , Michelle diligently campaigned on his behalf. By this time, she had a more established public image and was widely popular. Politico described her as “the most popular member of the Obama administration” and an invaluable asset when it comes to raising money and delivering speeches. She traveled the country, giving talks and making public appearances. On November 6, 2012, Barack was re-elected for a second term.

As first lady of the United States, Michelle focused her attention on issues such as the support of military families, helping working women balance career and family, and encouraging national service. During the first year of the Obama presidency, Michelle and Barack volunteered at homeless shelters and soup kitchens in the Washington, D.C. area. Michelle also made appearances at public schools, stressing the importance of education and volunteer work.

Ever conscious of her family’s diet and health, Michelle supported the organic-food movement, instructing the White House kitchens to prepare organic food for guests and her family. In March 2009, Michelle worked with 23 fifth graders from a Washington, D.C. school to plant an 1,100-square-foot vegetable garden and install beehives on the South Lawn of the White House. The garden expanded its footprint throughout the Obama administration, and Michelle continued to host events with schoolchildren there. She also put reducing childhood obesity near the top of her agenda.

Michelle remained committed to health and wellness causes throughout her time as first lady. In 2012, she announced a new fitness program for kids as part of her Let’s Move initiative. Along with the U.S. Olympic team and other sports organizations, she worked to get young people to try out a new sport or activity. She also released a book as part of her mission to promote healthy eating called American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America (2012), which included her own experience creating a vegetable garden as well as the work of community gardens elsewhere.

Throughout her career, Obama has given a number of powerful speeches. In September 2012, she delivered a noteworthy speech at the Democratic National Convention. “Every day, the people I meet inspire me, every day they make me proud, every day they remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth,” she said. “Serving as your first lady is an honor and a privilege.” Obama won both public and critical praise for her narrative, called a “shining moment” by The Washington Post .

In July 2016, Michelle campaigned in support of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. When Clinton was named the Democratic presidential nominee, she became the first woman in the country’s history to win a major political party’s presidential nomination. On the first night of the convention, Michelle spoke in support of Clinton, who had previously run against Barack during the 2008 primaries, and Clinton’s vision of a progressive America.

“I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, Black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn,” she said. “And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.” During the same speech, Michelle alluded to the behavior of Clinton’s Republican challenger Donald Trump , saying her party would not stoop to his level, with the famous phrase : “Our motto is, when they go low, we go high.”

On January 13, 2017, Michelle made her final speech as first lady at the White House, saying “being your first lady has been the greatest honor of my life, and I hope I’ve made you proud.” In an emotional moment, she addressed young Americans:

“I want our young people to know that they matter, that they belong. So don’t be afraid. You hear me, young people? Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered. Empower yourself with a good education. Then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise. Lead by example with hope; never fear.”

In 2014, Barack and Michelle established the Obama Foundation that is overseeing the creation of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s South Side. The nonprofit also runs numerous programs aligned with its mission “to inspire, empower, and connect people to change their world.” Michelle is particularly involved with the foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance, which supports education for girls around the world.

On November 13, 2018, Michelle published her critically acclaimed memoir, Becoming . Describing the “deeply personal experience” of writing the book, she tweeted : “I talk about my roots and how a girl from the South Side found her voice. I hope my journey inspires readers to find the courage to become whoever they aspire to be.” In just 15 days, it became the best-selling book in the United States for the year 2018 and also became a bestseller in several other countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and South Africa. In 2020, Michelle won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for the audiobook version of Becoming .

Michelle published a second book in 2022 called The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times . In it, Michelle shared the contents of what she described as her “personal toolbox,” including attitudes, habits, and practices used to overcome feelings of fear, helplessness, and uncertainty. In particular, it addressed the “low-grade form” of depression that gripped the nation during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michelle premiered a podcast in 2020 called The Michelle Obama Podcast . Podcast critic Nicholas Quah of Vulture said it explored similar themes as the former first lady’s memoir Becoming , calling it entertaining and writing that he was “deeply moved and taken by its comforts, so parched am I for any modicum of moral leadership in the public sphere.” In March 2023, Michelle launched Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast , to accompany her book The Light We Carry .

In February 2024, the audiobook version of The Light We Carry earned Obama her second Grammy Award .

In May 2018, Michelle and Barack announced that they signed a multi-year deal to produce TV series and films for Netflix through their company, Higher Ground Productions. “Barack and I have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire us, to make us think differently about the world around us,” the former First Lady said in a statement .

Their first joint effort resulted in Netflix’s release of American Factory (2019), a documentary about the 2015 launch of a Chinese-owned automotive glass factory in Dayton, Ohio, and the clash of differing cultures and business interests. A hit with critics, American Factory earned an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in February 2020. Michelle was an executive producer and presenter on the Netflix children’s cooking series Waffles + Mochi . Additionally , Netflix and Higher Ground Productions partnered on the documentary Becoming (2020), based upon Michelle’s memoir of the same name.

• Every day, the people I meet inspire me. Every day, they make me proud. Every day, they remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on Earth. Serving as your first lady is an honor and a privilege.
• When I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.
• Our motto is, when they go low, we go high.
• One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.
• I have the privilege of working on the issues that I choose and the issues that I feel most passionate about.
• These are the moments that define us—not the day you get the promotion, not the day you win teacher of the year, but the times that force you to claw and scratch and fight just to get through the day; the moments when you get knocked down and you’re wondering whether it’s even worth it to get back up. Those are the times when you’ve got to ask yourself, “Who am I going to be?”
• That’s what’s always made this country great—embracing the diversity of experience and opinion that surrounds us everywhere we go.
• The only difference between me and every other woman that I know is that my challenges are publicized, and I’m doing this juggling in front of cameras.
• We should always have three friends in our lives: one who walks ahead who we look up to and we follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journeys; and then, one who we reach back for and we bring along after we’ve cleared the way.
• People told me, ‘You can do it all. Just stay the course, get your education, and you can raise a child, stay thin, be in shape, love your man, look good, and raise healthy children.’ That was a lie.
• Exercise is really important to me—it’s therapeutic. So if I’m ever feeling tense or stressed or like I’m about to have a meltdown, I’ll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls.
• It would be hard for me to edit myself and still be me.
• We learned about dignity and decency—that how hard you work matters more than how much you make... that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.
• As women, we must stand up for ourselves. As women, we must stand up for each other. As women, we must stand up for justice for all.

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‘Becoming,’ by Michelle Obama: A pioneering and important work by Allyson Hobbs

Reading Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming,” feels like catching up with an old friend over a lazy afternoon. Parts of her story are familiar, but still, you lean in, eager to hear them again. Other parts are new and come as a surprise. Sometimes her story makes you laugh out loud and shake your head with a gentle knowingness. Some parts are painful to hear. You wince and wish that you could have protected her from an unkind world.

Obama has sworn to tell her readers everything, and she delivers on that promise. From the silly to the surreal, from the momentous to the mundane, from the tragic to the transformative, she tells it all. As she shares her story, you are struck that every word is honest, brave and real.

“Becoming” explains how Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, “girl of the South Side,” came to be. It is a story that is as much about becoming as it is about belonging.

Obama invites us into the upstairs apartment of the red brick bungalow to experience the camaraderie and closeness that she shared with her parents, Marian and Fraser, and her older brother, Craig. She details her drive, her pursuit of achievement, her desire to check the right boxes and to prove that she was, in fact, “Princeton material,” despite the wrongheaded assessment of her high school college counselor. She would wrestle with the stubborn question — Am I good enough? — that lodged itself in her mind for years to come.

As first lady, Obama shattered the mold. Americans had never seen a life like Obama’s. She did not fit the dominant cultural frame that has been mounted around African American women.

“Becoming” shatters the mold, too. Not only because Obama writes in her signature tell-it-like-it-is style, but because she steeps her story in the richness and complexity of African American history that seldom reaches national audiences.

She is the descendant of enslaved people, a grandchild of the Great Migration, and the product of the storied black community on Chicago’s South Side. She is an observer of segregated housing, restrictive covenants and the exodus of white families to Chicago’s northern and western suburbs. She bears witness to the dashed dreams of her great uncle and grandfather who wished for greater educational and employment opportunities at a time when few if any existed for black men.

Through humor and poignant storytelling, Obama captures the joys of growing up in the neighborhood that writers have called “the capital of black America”: the sound of jazz blasting from her grandfather’s house around the corner, the barbecues where countless cousins gathered, and the feeling that, as Obama writes, “everyone was kin.”

There is a universality in the themes that “Becoming” addresses that many readers will recognize and appreciate, but at its heart, this is a story about the complexity of black women’s lives told firsthand by a black woman. This is a pioneering and important work that helps fill a gap in the literature on African American women’s lives.

“Becoming,” by Michelle Obama.

A virtual museum of his presidency

Through a collection of deeply reported stories, videos, photographs, documents and graphics, experience Barack Obama’s historic time in office: as the first black president , as commander in chief , as a domestic and foreign policymaker, and as a husband and father .

Continue to the gallery of stories or keep reading: How Michelle Obama became a singular American voice .

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Continue to gallery of stories

How Michelle Obama became a singular American voice

Three weeks after Inauguration Day in 2009 and still a long way from crafting an agenda, Michelle Obama climbed into her motorcade and paid a visit to Mary’s Center, a Latino community services agency a few miles north of the White House. She read “ Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? ” to the young children and met with teenagers who asked why she had come.

The first reason, she said, was that Washington was now the Obamas’ home and they had always been taught to listen and not just pass on by. The second reason identified the audience and framed the approach that would define this most uncommon first lady’s agenda for the next eight years.

“I think it’s real important for young kids, particularly kids who come from communities without resources, to see me, not the first lady,” she said. “To see that there is no magic to me sitting here. There are no miracles that happen. There is no magic dust.”

With the 13 teenagers seated in a semicircle, Obama shared the setbacks and self-doubt she faced as the daughter of black working-class parents in Chicago. When people told her she couldn’t achieve something, she set out to prove them wrong. One step at a time, she climbed, and now she felt an obligation to share.

“When you get, you give back,” she said.

Obama would give much bigger speeches on much bigger stages as she became one of the most famous people in the world. For many Democrats, she was the moral voice of the 2016 presidential campaign, calling out Republican Donald Trump for trafficking in “prejudice, fears and lies.” For other fans, she was simply the first lady who went viral, making them smile with her eclectic fashion choices and her energetic, sometimes goofy pitches for healthier eating.

The heart of Obama’s efforts, however, was a message about the persistent inequities of race, class and gender in America. In scores of speeches and projects, she turned again and again to the stacked deck. These were the themes and conundrums that animated her work before she reached the White House and now seem certain to shape her choices after she departs.

For all the grief she took from critics who conjured radicalism, grievance or, bizarrely, racism from her finely tuned remarks, Obama’s antidotes were fundamentally timeless and conservative. More than anything, she used the strength of her own Chicago-to-Princeton-to-the-White-House narrative to urge kids to believe in themselves and never quit. She mastered the levers of popular culture and harnessed the convening power of her office and her carefully curated brand to establish partnerships with the private sector.

Obama addressed obesity, which disproportionately affects low-income families and children of color. She worked to increase arts education in poorly performing schools and ease the path for aspiring first-generation college students. She dispensed hugs to thousands of children, saying in a simple embrace that she believed in them. At a BET special, she called out, “Black girls rock!”

A straight-talker by temperament, she modulated her tone in deference to the role. Eternally disciplined and pragmatic, she never swung for the fences. Critics on the left chided her for not being bold enough, as she acknowledged last year. Her answer: “These were my choices, my issues, and I decided to tackle them in the way that felt most authentic to me — in a way that was both substantive and strategic, but also fun and, hopefully, inspiring.”

When Obama took up her unpaid job three days after her 45th birthday, she faced vast and conflicting expectations. She was the first African American first lady in a country that was anything but post-racial. She was the magnetic campaigner who told audiences that power concedes nothing without a struggle. She was the highly educated, professionally accomplished mother of two young daughters who smilingly adopted the moniker of “mom in chief.”

“From the moment we walked in the door, people have wanted to get inside her head and figure her out. ‘Is she in this box or that box? Why isn’t she doing this or doing that?’ ” said Jocelyn Frye, a Harvard Law School friend who became Obama’s first policy adviser. “She’s not a person who lives in boxes. It’s just not that simple.”

The personal story that Obama carried into the White House in January 2009 was enough to etch her name in the history books even if she did not accomplish anything more. She called herself “the little black girl from the South Side of Chicago.” As she would say later, her ancestors had arrived in the United States in chains and now she and Barack Obama were living in a home that slaves helped build.

But in other ways, too, Obama brought a set of experiences markedly different from her modern-day predecessors. Of the previous eight presidents, four had been governors, four had been vice presidents. Their wives had lived in the public eye. Obama was a young Chicago professional, a working mother in a big city who spoke openly about juggling jobs, chores and child-rearing with her increasingly famous and preoccupied husband.

By upbringing, she was urban and attuned to issues of prejudice, hardship and inequality. She adored her father, Fraser C. Robinson III, a gregarious aspiring artist who spent his working life as a shift worker in the city water plant. A swimmer, boxer and soldier as a young man, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his 30s. His health deteriorated, and he went from one crutch to two to a motorized cart. He died in 1991 at age 55, still working at the plant.

Both of Obama’s grandfathers had come north in the Great Migration, and many members of the Robinson and Shields families lived nearby. Purnell Shields, a talented carpenter and Obama’s maternal grandfather, was barred as an African American from the labor unions that claimed the highest-paying jobs. Fraser C. Robinson Jr. spent much of his career as a postal worker. If he had been born white, Obama once said, he would have been a banker.

Obama spent time with this extended family. She knew them all, from those who were prospering to those who were ailing or just getting by. She also knew countless schoolmates who seemed hardly different from her, yet had fallen short of their ambitions. When Barack Obama met her in 1989, he detected a sense of vulnerability that he traced to Michelle’s sense that life was “terrifyingly random.” She called herself “a statistical anomaly.”

After ditching the prosperous law firm, where she found the work soulless and many colleagues narrow, she spent two years doing economic development work at City Hall with future White House adviser Valerie Jarrett. Next, in what she described as the happiest phase of her working life, she built the Chicago office of Public Allies, a nonprofit leadership training program with roots in community organizing.

Next, she spent a dozen years as an administrator at the University of Chicago, where she elevated the interests of neighboring African American communities. Much as she would in the White House, she searched for ways to connect a powerful and often remote institution with communities where it could do some good. Comfortable and connected in both worlds, she saw herself as a bridge.

In 2001, protesters seeking more construction jobs for African Americans at the university medical center said she should be fired. One said Obama and her colleagues were looking out for themselves and did “not have the best interests of blacks at heart.” Obama persisted. In the next seven years, 42.9 percent of the hospital’s spending on new construction, or $48.8 million, went to firms run by minorities or women, according to university figures.

The focus was not new. At Harvard Law School, where the tenured faculty was 96 percent white and 92 percent male, Obama spoke up for greater diversity. Charles Ogletree, a mentor and professor, pinpointed her passions early.

“Everything she wrote, the things that she was involved in, the things that she thought about,” he recalled of her law school years in the mid-1980s, “were in effect reflections on race and gender. And how she had to keep the doors open for women and men going forward.”

One of Obama’s signatures was the push for a seat at the table — or in “the room where it happens,” to borrow from “Hamilton,” the Broadway musical the Obamas admire. A few years ago, she told a gathering of White House interns that if they were not prepared to risk their power when they claimed that seat, they needed to make room for someone who would.

In reaching the most rarefied of tables, she figured she had four years, maybe eight, to make something happen, to “move the needle,” as she put it. As the media made a fuss over a new hairstyle, she once explained how she saw the role of first lady: “We take our bangs and we stand in front of important things that the world needs to see. And, eventually, people stop looking at the bangs and they start looking at what we’re standing in front of.”

Obama saw early that she could connect with disadvantaged young people by describing her South Side upbringing and the choices she made in her life. Even as the Obamas set out unambiguously to be the president and first lady for the entire country, they were determined “to look out for people who historically have not had people looking out for them,” Valerie Jarrett said in an interview. “Certainly, African American women and girls see themselves in her in a unique way.”

The White House portfolio included Let’s Move, her childhood obesity project, and efforts to open the White House and its grounds to kids who barely knew where it was and never imagined stepping inside. She established Joining Forces to help the military and their families with jobs and workplace issues and started a small mentoring program that became a personal cause.

She worked on homelessness among veterans and pushed Reach Higher, seeking to increase post-secondary education for low-income adolescents. Finally, she launched Let Girls Learn, an international initiative designed to improve access to secondary school for millions of girls around the world who found themselves on the outside looking in.

Throughout, Obama made clear to her staff that she favored coherent projects backed by creative but realistic thinking. She sought buy-in from federal agencies, state governments and private partners, and she wanted to make use of every opportunity. She told her aides, “Don’t just put me on a plane, send me someplace and have me smile.”

“She never looked at things esoterically or theoretically. It was practical and real,” said Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter, who advised her at key moments. “Her focus was never ‘How do I move Washington?’ It was much bigger than that. It was ‘How do you mobilize a country? How are real people outside of Washington going to see things?’ ”

At the White House, she staged arts events, from dance, music and spoken word to food and design workshops. She made sure that artists who were performing for well-heeled East Room audiences at night were teaching children at the White House or local schools during the day. Her tastes tilted to designers, artists, playwrights and directors of color, choices that alerted millions of Obama-watchers to work they might not have seen or heard.

In 2011, she helped launch Turnaround Arts, a program designed to deliver arts teaching, inspiration and supplies to some of the worst-performing schools in the country — often in places where arts programming was a budget casualty. From eight pilot programs in 2011, the project now reaches 68 schools, with 20 to be added in 2017.

“She knows the power of the arts. It’s visceral and it’s who she is,” said Megan Beyer, executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. “Every time we do an event, she’ll look at the audience and she’ll say, ‘This is not a fluke. This is what happens when you invest in these kids.’ ”

To critics on the right, including former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who mocked or denounced new science-based standards for school lunches as overly intrusive, Obama urged them to look more closely. She pointed to the millions of low-income children who depend on those meals and the federal government’s help in paying for them.

“We simply can’t afford to say, ‘Oh, well, it’s too hard, so let’s not do it,’ ” Obama said in 2014. When lobbyists persuaded Congress to count one-eighth of a cup of tomato paste in pizza sauce as the equivalent of a half-cup of vegetables, she wrote dismissively in the New York Times, “You don’t have to be a nutritionist to know that this doesn’t make much sense.”

Inside the East Wing, Obama commanded intense loyalty from her staff and set her own agenda, down to the number of public days on her schedule — two at first, while Malia and Sasha were getting settled, and later three. She stayed closer to home than Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton, who each traveled abroad more than twice as much, and put limits on her campaign trips, especially when not campaigning for her husband.

She tightly controlled her message. In eight years, she never gave a news conference, although she held a select few roundtables with reporters. She rarely granted interviews to the beat reporters who knew her work the best. More often, and more strategically, she granted face time to grateful personalities and comedians, along with media outlets carefully chosen for the audiences they reached.

Aides and friends were barely more accessible. When reporters called, former chief of staff Jackie Norris once said, Obama expected her friends to “check in and have conversations and make sure that it’s good for her.” Mostly, the friends did.

Since the beginning of the first presidential campaign nearly 10 years ago, Obama has credited her girlfriends with keeping her grounded amid the maelstrom. “When you’re isolated, that’s when you need your girls. They can keep you together when no one else can,” said Angela Kennedy, a D.C. public defender and former Princeton roommate who sees Obama regularly. “She’s smart. She recognized that.”

Not trailed by the presidential press pool, Obama escaped to the gym, restaurants, theaters and her friends’ houses, as well as the occasional trip to the presidential retreat at Camp David. It helped to have her mother, Marian Robinson, now 79, living on the third floor of the White House. “I can always go up to her room and cry, complain, argue,” Obama said. “And she just says, go on down there and do what you’re supposed to do.”

Obama spoke often of what it meant to have normal family dinners and activities with Malia and Sasha, talking about the girls’ doings and keeping things light. She has always been able “to stay above the fray,” said Frye, her Harvard friend, in part by “meeting with real people and talking about real-world problems. At the end of the day, she has kept her head.”

Obama’s ascendance — as mother, mentor, leader and critic — carries many meanings in American culture, particularly as an African American woman, said Nell Irvin Painter, an emeritus professor of American history at Princeton.

“Her power is a symbolic power,” Painter said, noting the way Obama “has conducted herself as first lady. She has grace, there is no question, but I would add elegance. It’s a kind of assurance that is also something new for a black woman in public life. She is the symbol of what an American can be. Michelle Obama has presented a universal American identity.”

On May 9, 2015, Obama took the stage at Tuskegee University in Alabama and delivered the most thorough and personal speech about race and racism of her tenure. As a speechmaker, said author Garry Wills, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his study of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “I don’t know that she has any competitors in women’s history.” She wowed millions of fans with keynote addresses at three successive Democratic National Conventions, but she also had a serious body of work that received less attention in mainstream circles.

Many times before her Tuskegee appearance, she had spoken about the country’s history of violence and discrimination against African Americans. She did it in Orangeburg, S.C., in 2007 to woo black support for her husband’s candidacy. She did it in Nashville during the 2012 reelection campaign, and in Topeka, Kan., in 2014 to mark the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education . And she did it at other historically black universities, including Bowie State, Jackson State and North Carolina A&T.

Together, the talks reflected a lifetime of thinking about the shifting landscape of racism, the advances and the setbacks. At Tuskegee, she spoke of slights and hurdles while suggesting strategies — tested by her own experience, as always — to block out the noise and navigate a path forward.

“Here’s the thing: The road ahead is not going to be easy,” she told the graduates in an address that tracked the history of the Tuskegee Airmen, a storied black flying squadron in World War II. “It never is, especially for folks like you and me. Because while we’ve come so far, the truth is that those age-old problems are stubborn and they haven’t fully gone away. So there will be times, just like for those Airmen, when you feel like folks look right past you or they see just a fraction of who you are.”

“Too many folks feel frustrated and invisible,” Obama said. She cited worries about being pulled over “for absolutely no reason,” or being overlooked for a job “because of the way your name sounds,” or sending children to schools “that may no longer be separate, but are far from equal.” Above all, she said, there is the “realization that no matter how far you rise in life, how hard you work to be a good person, a good parent, a good citizen, for some folks, it will never be enough.”

The Obamas were not immune, despite their efforts, their achievements, their conduct. For years, Donald Trump sowed doubts about Barack Obama’s birth and citizenship, while talk show host Rush Limbaugh told his millions of followers that Michelle suffered from “uppity-ism” and called her “Michelle My Butt.” Foes likened her to a character from Planet of the Apes, a Star Wars Wookiee and a gorilla, a racist slur with a particularly long and ugly history. They challenged her patriotism and even questioned her gender.

But no matter how grim the outlook and how significant the structural challenges, Obama said at Tuskegee, despair and anger are “not an excuse to just throw up our hands and give up.” Instead, she proposed the measured, practical, traditional responses that had worked for her. Study, organize, band together, be a mentor, help a cousin fill out a financial aid form and “vote, vote, vote.”

“You have got everything you need to do this. You’ve got it in you,” she said in her best I-believe-in-you tone. “Most of all, you’ve got yourselves and all of the heart, grit and smarts that got you to this day.”

It was never Obama’s style to summon people to the barricades. She drew criticism from some African American intellectuals and activists for perpetuating a bootstraps narrative that said black people must be twice as good to do just as well as whites. Painter recognized the critique but saw Obama’s message differently.

“She also says you can figure it out. That’s a crucial part,” Painter said. “Her commentary to black kids is, ‘You can do it. It’s not just lecturing and shaking her finger in their faces, but an encouragement. It’s pragmatic, but the way she phrases it, it is full of empathy and I think there is still a lack of empathy in the way the United States speaks to black people.”

The response to Obama’s remarks provided proof aplenty. Conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham saw “a litany of victimization.” Media comment boards filled with talk of a “tirade” and an “America-hater” and an “angry woman who has no appreciation for the many gifts our country has bestowed on her.” Someone wrote, “Can she or her husband ever just be Americans? Why do they always have to focus on their skin color? Repulsive.”

But also, “Michelle for President!” — something that Obama, whose favorability ratings routinely topped 60 percent, has said will never happen. “No. Nope. Not going to do it,” she said earlier this year.

Michelle Obama was dismayed by the rise of Donald Trump. She perceived danger in the candidacy of an unstudied Republican who lied with abandon and routinely mocked and disparaged rivals, critics and entire swathes of the American populace, all the while vowing to wreck much of what the Obama administration spent eight years building.

“This is not normal. This is not politics as usual,” Obama declared at an October rally in New Hampshire after a tape surfaced of Trump boasting about grabbing women by the genitals. A growing number of women said they had been accosted. “I know it’s a campaign, but this isn’t about politics. It’s about human decency. It’s about right and wrong.”

Obama said repeatedly during the campaign that Trump was dangerous, undeserving and lacking “any idea what this job takes.” In Philadelphia, she pointedly recalled Trump’s leadership of the birther movement, referring to the “hurtful, deceitful questions deliberately designed to undermine” her husband’s presidency.

The attacks on Trump were the strongest, sharpest words Obama uttered in public during the White House years. Whatever her anger or dismay, she never said she was surprised, for these were the regressive forces that she had seen in action her entire life.

On a weekday morning, with not many people watching, Obama delivered her take on the political moment. To a rapt church audience — men and women, white and black — she said in a tone more suited to a seminar than a rally, “My fear is that we don’t know what truth looks like anymore.” She spoke of her hard-won understanding of the world, drawing on her Chicago life, where persistence and good intentions came with no guarantees.

Politicians had become expert at turning doubt into fear, she said, as life got “harder, progressively harder, for regular people.”

“We’re still a nation that’s a little too mean,” Obama said. “I wish mean worked, because we’re good at it. Our tone is bad and we’ve grown to believe that, somehow, mean talk is tough talk . . . and we reward it. Not just in politics, but we reward it in every sliver of our culture. We look on people who are tough and say, ‘That’s what we need.’ ”

Obama spoke those words in South Carolina in January 2008. As Trump makes his way to Washington with his gilded pitchfork, her assessment rings true for more than 62 million Americans who supported him and millions more who didn’t care enough to vote. She is leaving the White House with work unfinished and fresh troubles brewing. She was right that day at Mary’s Center, in her first weeks on the job, when she offered a verdict that applied as much to the nation as to herself. There are no miracles, no magic dust.

What Obama offered was something else. To audiences great and small, she presented conviction, savvy, a dose of inspiration and a certain faith that the battles were worth waging and the effort would pay off in the end.

Peter Slevin, a former Post national correspondent, is the author of “ Michelle Obama: A Life .”

This story is part of a virtual museum of President Barack Obama’s presidency. In five parts — The First Black President , Commander in Chief , Obama’s America , Obama and the World and The First Family — we explore the triumphs and travails of his historic tenure.

• A hopeful moment on race
• A soliloquy in Philadelphia
• The beer summit
• The other trailblazers
• On a bridge in Selma
• In his own words
• The backlash
• A new aesthetic
• Kids on Obama
• Crime, justice and race
• Obama in Africa
• The Obama electorate
• Your Obama presidency

Barack Obama’s watershed 2008 election and the presidency that followed profoundly altered the aesthetics of American democracy, transforming the Founding Fathers’ narrow vision of politics and citizenship into something more expansive and more elegant. The American presidency suddenly looked very different, and for a moment America felt different, too.

The Obama victory helped fulfill one of the great ambitions of the civil rights struggle by showcasing the ability of extraordinarily talented black Americans to lead and excel in all facets of American life. First lady Michelle Obama, and daughters Sasha and Malia, extended this reimagining of black American life by providing a conspicuous vision of a healthy, loving and thriving African American family that defies still-prevalent racist stereotypes.

But some interpreted Obama’s triumph as much more.

The victory was heralded as the arrival of a “post-racial” America, one in which the nation’s original sin of racial slavery and post-Reconstruction Jim Crow discrimination had finally been absolved by the election of a black man as commander in chief. For a while, the nation basked in a racially harmonious afterglow.

A black president would influence generations of young children to embrace a new vision of American citizenship. The “Obama Coalition” of African American, white, Latino, Asian American and Native American voters had helped usher in an era in which institutional racism and pervasive inequality would fade as Americans embraced the nation’s multicultural promise.

Seven years later, such profound optimism seems misplaced. Almost immediately, the Obama presidency unleashed racial furies that have only multiplied over time. From the tea party’s racially tinged attacks on the president’s policy agenda to the “birther” movement’s more overtly racist fantasies asserting that Obama was not even an American citizen, the national racial climate grew more, and not less, fraught.

If racial conflict, in the form of birthers, tea partyers and gnawing resentments, implicitly shadowed Obama’s first term, it erupted into open warfare during much of his second. The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in the Shelby v. Holder case gutted Voting Rights Act enforcement, throwing into question the signal achievement of the civil rights movement’s heroic period.

Beginning with the 2012 shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, the nation reopened an intense debate on the continued horror of institutional racism evidenced by a string of high-profile deaths of black men, women, boys and girls at the hands of law enforcement.

The organized demonstrations, protests and outrage of a new generation of civil rights activists turned the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter into the clarion call for a new social justice movement. Black Lives Matter activists have forcefully argued that the U.S. criminal justice system represents a gateway to racial oppression, one marked by a drug war that disproportionately targets, punishes and warehouses young men and women of color. In her bestselling book “ The New Jim Crow ,” legal scholar Michelle Alexander argued that mass incarceration represents a racial caste system that echoes the pervasive, structural inequality of a system of racial apartheid that persists.

Obama’s first-term caution on race matters was punctured by his controversial remarks that police “acted stupidly” in the mistaken identity arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University’s prominent African American studies professor, in 2009. Four years later he entered the breach once more by proclaiming that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.”

In the aftermath of racial unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, and a racially motivated massacre in Charleston, S.C., Obama went further. In 2015, Obama found his voice in a series of stirring speeches in Selma, Ala., and Charleston, where he acknowledged America’s long and continuous history of racial injustice.

Policy-wise Obama has launched a private philanthropic effort, My Brother’s Keeper, designed to assist low-income black boys, and became the first president to visit a federal prison in a call for prison reform that foreshadowed the administration’s efforts to release federal inmates facing long sentences on relatively minor drug charges.

Despite these efforts, many of Obama’s African American supporters have expressed profound disappointment over the president’s refusal to forcefully pursue racial and economic justice policies for his most loyal political constituency.

From this perspective, the Obama presidency has played out as a cruel joke on members of the African American community who, despite providing indispensable votes, critical support and unstinting loyalty, find themselves largely shut out from the nation’s post-Great Recession economic recovery. Blacks have, critics suggested, traded away substantive policy demands for the largely symbolic psychological and emotional victory of having a black president and first family in the White House for eight years.

Others find that assessment harsh, noting that Obama’s most impressive policy achievements have received scant promotion from the White House or acknowledgment in the mainstream media.

History will decide the full measure of the importance, success, failures and shortcomings of the Obama presidency. With regard to race, Obama’s historical significance is ensured; only his impact and legacy are up for debate. In retrospect, the burden of transforming America’s tortured racial history in two four-year presidential terms proved impossible, even as its promise helped to catapult Obama to the nation’s highest office.

Obama’s presidency elides important aspects of the civil rights struggle, especially the teachings of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. King, for a time, served as the racial justice consciousness for two presidents — John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Many who hoped Obama might be able to serve both roles — as president and racial justice advocate — have been disappointed. Yet there is a revelatory clarity in that disappointment, proving that Obama is not King or Frederick Douglass, but Abraham Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson. Even a black president, perhaps especially a black president, could not untangle racism’s Gordian knot on the body politic. Yet in acknowledging the limitations of Obama’s presidency on healing racial divisions and the shortcomings of his policies in uplifting black America, we may reach a newfound political maturity that recognizes that no one person — no matter how powerful — can single-handedly rectify structures of inequality constructed over centuries.

Peniel Joseph is professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

Being number one means nothing until there’s a number two.

If i had a son, he would look like trayvon., some young americans have known only one president in their lifetime..

• On war and leadership
• The parade of generals
• A tour of duty
• One enemy after another
• Words of war and peace
• The last convoy
• The rise of ISIS
• Weighing intervention
• An army of drones
• Struggle after service
• Fear at home
• Your fight, your stories

Has he failed to understand the nature of war or shown the virtues of patience to win the long game?

We won some good fights and we lost the war., no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy..

• Eight turbulent years
• Economic brinksmanship
• The price of Obamacare
• A new state of unions
• Shots fired
• A cultural shift
• ‘Healing the planet’
• Making presidential comedy
• A mark in the wilderness
• American reactions
• Your America

Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.

What is it like to be the last black president.

• Determined restraint
• For Muslims, unanswered prayers
• Open hand, clenched fist
• Talking to Tehran
• Closer now – and cigars!
• Standing in the world
• Friends, adversaries
• A pivot to Asia
• Air Force One miles
• Your worldview
• The new modern family
• White House, black women
• The first lady’s last stand
• It’s an Obama thing
• In the cultural mix
• White House parents
• The most popular of them all?
• The O’Bidens
• The first dogs

The Obama family has really uplifted the image of the black family from the moment we saw them.

He does not walk. he strolls with a black man’s head-up posture..

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What President Obama’s executive actions mean for President Trump

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'Meaning of Michelle' Essays Celebrate First Lady's Realness

Tanya Ballard Brown

First lady Michelle Obama welcomes community leaders from across the country to celebrate the successes and share best practices to continue the work of the Mayor's Challenge to End Veterans' Homelessness in the East Room of the White House complex in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP hide caption

First lady Michelle Obama welcomes community leaders from across the country to celebrate the successes and share best practices to continue the work of the Mayor's Challenge to End Veterans' Homelessness in the East Room of the White House complex in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14.

Over the past eight years, Michelle Obama — a former attorney with degrees from Princeton and Harvard universities — has dealt with a lot of cheap (and often mean) shots lobbed in her direction . But while she has her detractors, this first black first lady is widely admired — and not just for her famously defined arms (they even have their own Tumblr ).

So it's not surprising that, in these last days of disco for the Obama administration, a few fans of the first lady would share their love for her in the just-released book, The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own, a collection of essays edited by author Veronica Chambers.

These writers aren't academically dissecting Obama in her role as first lady. No, these are FANS, so much so that some don't need to call her by her last name. It's just Michelle. Among them is a Top Chef , a jazzy jazz musician , and an original member of the Hamilton cast. Many of the essayists felt a connection, an intimacy with the first lady that Obama helped foster not just by being one of the people, but by reminding black Americans, as Chambers writes, that "blackness is not burdensome, and we ... have joy as a birthright."

The Meaning of Michelle

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In the book's preface, film director Ava DuVernay declares, outright, that Michelle Obama's mere presence in the White House was like taking a broom and sweeping out the dirt of past administrations.

In one visit, Michelle supplanted the cartoons of Monica, Katrina and their representative presidencies, ripe with mishandled trust and low morals. In that one photo op, Michelle infused the image of the first lady with pride, panache and polish. Many of us saw a woman to be admired. A woman to be trusted. Scratch that. Many of us saw a Black woman to be admired. A Black woman to be trusted. There it is.

For many black women, writer Benilde Little sums up that feeling of pride meshed with admiration when she explains why she burst into tears upon seeing a post-2008 inauguration photo of the first lady in The New York Times:

"I'm just so happy," Little writes. "She's just like me."

Little describes how Obama's working class-to-Ivy league background helped provide a more fully fleshed out portrayal of black women, something beyond the "perfect pitch, high bourg or stone ghettoians." While the first lady isn't a product of the Jack and Jill set, we know her origin isn't one of black pathology, either.

Nope, her story is the norm for many black Americans: two hard-working parents who pushed and encouraged her to aim high and do well, which she did. Then she got married and had some kids.

Feminist Brittney Cooper put it real plainly in her essay:

As mom-in-chief, Michelle could correct decades-long stereotypes of black women as neglectful parents and money-grubbing welfare queens.

She is, as blogger Damon Young writes in his essay, "a regular black chick." (He means that in a good way, trust me).

While black Americans collectively saw her and saw our sisters and cousins and aunts and moms, we (black men) saw her and saw our classmates and our neighbors; our coworkers and our colleagues. We saw the woman we wanted to approach, to court, to date, to commit to, to marry, and to start a family and grow old with, even if we didn't actually realize we wanted to do any of those things before we saw her.

In fact, Michelle's regular-ness and sista girl realness comes up a lot, as writer after writer describes how she made the White House — and her husband — seem more relatable.

Not all of the essays are perfect, but I don't think readers will come away from this collection disappointed. They are reflections on a woman who feels like a good girlfriend to a large portion of the American public, though they only know her from afar. And the wistfulness in them brings to mind an oldie but goodie from Boyz II Men:

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This Is Michelle: Read the Story of Michelle Obama

August 17, 2020, time for kids and american girl.

Michelle Robinson was born in 1964. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a tiny apartment. Her family was very close and ate dinner together as often as possible. Michelle and her brother were allowed to watch one hour of television each night. They spent the rest of their free time playing board games or chasing each other around the house. They loved to spray furniture polish on the wood floor so that they could slide faster in their socks.

Michelle’s father worked at the city’s water plant. He started as a janitor and went on to become a manager. Even when he developed multiple sclerosis and struggled to walk, he kept working. Michelle’s mother taught her to read before Michelle started kindergarten. Michelle began taking piano lessons when she was just 4 years old. She quickly discovered that the more she practiced, the more she improved.

Michelle liked school and did well. From sixth to eighth grade, she took advanced classes with kids who worked at their own pace. Being with other talented students motivated Michelle, who kept track of how she was doing compared to her classmates. The competition felt like a game, and Michelle liked to win.

When Michelle was ready for high school, she tested into the Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, which attracts talented students from all over the city. It took Michelle an hour and a half to get to school by bus. She used the time to study, which helped her excel and graduate in the top 10% of her class as a member of the National Honor Society.

ON THE TRAIL Michelle Obama waves to the crowd after speaking at the Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2016.

For college, Michelle set her sights on Princeton. When her high school counselor doubted Michelle’s ability to get into the school, Michelle was deter-mined to prove her wrong. She wrote a compelling college entrance essay that earned her a spot at the prestigious university. As always, Michelle’s hard work was the key to her success.

Focused First Lady

READY TO LEAD Barack and Michelle Obama attend the 2009 Neighborhood Inaugural Ball, in Washington, D.C.

By 2009, millions of people knew Michelle Obama’s name. On January 20, her husband had become the 44th president of the United States. She had campaigned during his candidacy and was known as a great public speaker. As First Lady, Michelle focused on social issues such as education and healthy living. She helped military families, encouraged kids to exercise, and urged schools to provide healthier meals for students.

Michelle’s accomplishments go far beyond being America’s first Black First Lady. She’s also launched pro-grams that focus on education and help young people succeed. These include the Reach Higher Initiative, Let Girls Learn, and the Girls Opportunity Alliance.

Michelle met her husband, Barack Obama, at a law firm where they both worked as lawyers.

Michelle and Barack have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

Before she got to the White House, Michelle was executive director for Public Allies, in Chicago, which helps young people interested in public service.

She also worked at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she helped her community find affordable health care.

Michelle’s memoir, Becoming , has been turned into a documentary film.

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Michele Obama’s Speech: A Rhetorical Analysis Essay

The study of what rhetorical tools public personalities use in their speech can be a beneficial aspect to study. With its help, people can get an understanding of how, when, and where people can use rhetorical components. This work aims to study Michelle Obama’s opening remarks at the White House Convention on Food Marketing to Children. The main message of the First Lady was to draw attention to the suppression of the advertising of unhealthy food to minors. In addition, the main appeals that Obama uses are logic and emotional.

The first aspect of rhetoric used in this speech is logic. It implies the justification and reasons for a particular action or event. Michele Obama stated that “between 2008 and 2011, obesity rates among low-income preschoolers dropped in 19 states and territories across the country” (Read Michelle Obama’s Speech on Food Marketing para. 10). Therefore, Obama provides a justification of how important it is for television changes to encourage a proper lifestyle among the younger generation.

The next valuable component of rhetoric in the studied speech of the first lady is the emotional aspect. Thus, Obama emphasizes that “while we have made important progress, when one in three kids is still on track to develop diabetes, and when the diet has now surpassed smoking” (Read Michelle Obama’s Speech on Food Marketing para. 11). In this case, Michele Obama points to the positive results already achieved while also highlighting that children are still at risk.

In conclusion, this work was engaged in analyzing Michelle Obama’s speech on the topic of the harm of the media for introducing the younger generation to healthy habits. To better convey the main idea, the first lady used such components of rhetoric as logic and emotion. They helped to better form and give important information, gave the speech solidity, and improved the audience’s ability to persuade.

Works Cited

“Read Michelle Obama’s Speech on Food Marketing.” Grub Streets , 2013, Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, January 10). Michele Obama’s Speech: A Rhetorical Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/michele-obamas-speech-a-rhetorical-analysis/

"Michele Obama’s Speech: A Rhetorical Analysis." IvyPanda , 10 Jan. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/michele-obamas-speech-a-rhetorical-analysis/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Michele Obama’s Speech: A Rhetorical Analysis'. 10 January.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Michele Obama’s Speech: A Rhetorical Analysis." January 10, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/michele-obamas-speech-a-rhetorical-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda . "Michele Obama’s Speech: A Rhetorical Analysis." January 10, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/michele-obamas-speech-a-rhetorical-analysis/.

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IvyPanda . "Michele Obama’s Speech: A Rhetorical Analysis." January 10, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/michele-obamas-speech-a-rhetorical-analysis/.

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Was Michelle Obama's Thesis Restricted Until After the 2008 Election?

The availability of michelle obama's senior thesis fluctuated throughout the 2008 presidential campaign., david mikkelson, published march 31, 2008.

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In early 2008 Princeton University placed a restriction on access to Michelle Obama's senior thesis that was stated as lasting until the day after the presidential election of November 2008.

Princeton lifted the restriction on access to the thesis in March of 2008.

In every U.S. presidential election campaign, the two major parties' candidates become the subjects of prolonged and intense scrutiny, with seemingly everything they've ever said or done becoming fodder for endless analysis, interpretation and criticism. The scrutiny doesn't always stop with the candidates themselves, however — their parents, siblings, children, and other close associates sometimes find themselves the subjects of fervent investigation as well.

Candidates' spouses, in particular, are often a subject of great interest. Not only are they relatives that candidates have "chosen," but they live with the candidates day in and day out, and they sometimes serve as political surrogates by stumping for their husbands or wives on the campaign trail. They probably know the inner workings of the candidates' minds better than anyone else, and they're presumed to be important sources of advice, counsel, and influence. All of this means that the senior thesis of Michelle Obama, wife of Illinois senator (and leading Democratic presidential contender) Barack Obama would naturally be a subject of considerable interest, especially since the subject of that thesis is itself a significant political topic. The former Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, who graduated from Princeton University in 1985 with a B.A. in sociology (and later earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1988), wrote her senior undergraduate thesis on the subject of "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community."

Michelle Obama's thesis became a matter of controversy (outside of its subject matter) in early 2008 when some interested parties who attempted to retrieve its content were informed by Princeton that access to the thesis had been restricted until after the presidential election in November 2008. Regardless of the reasons behind it, such a restriction naturally engendered suspicion that someone or something (in this case, presumably the Obama campaign itself) had a vested interest in keeping the information from reaching the public, which in turn served to heighten interest in the contents of the thesis.

The Daily Princetonian noted that prior to 26 February 2008 "callers to Mudd [Manuscript Library] requesting information on Obama's thesis were told that the thesis has been made 'temporarily unavailable' and were directed to the University Office of Communications," but the university lifted that restriction after the Obama campaign made a copy of the thesis available through the web site Politico .

As for the content of the thesis, the Daily Princetonian summarized it thusly:

Obama, who concentrated in sociology and received a certificate in African-American studies, examined how the attitudes of black alumni have changed over the course of their time at the University. "Will they become more or less motivated to benefit the Black community?" Obama wrote in her thesis. After surveying 89 black graduates, Obama concluded that attending the University as an undergraduate decreased the extent to which black alumni identified with the black community as a whole. Obama drew on her personal experiences as an example. "As I enter my final year at Princeton, I find myself striving for many of the same goals as my White classmates — acceptance to a prestigious graduate school or a high-paying position in a successful corporation," she wrote, citing the University’s conservative values as a likely cause. "Predominately White universities like Princeton are socially and academically designed to cater to the needs of the White students comprising the bulk of their enrollments," she said, noting the small size of the African-American studies department and that there were only five black tenured professors at the University across all departments. Obama studied the attitudes of black Princeton alumni to determine what effect their time at Princeton had on their identification with the black community. "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before," she wrote in her introduction. "I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong."

Much scrutiny and discussion has been focused on a single phrase contained within the thesis, the statement that "blacks must join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor." This phrase has repeatedly been quoted out of context and presented as if it reflected Michelle Obama's own philosophy, but in its full context it is clearly her speculation about what she thought some of the respondents she surveyed for her thesis (i.e., students who had attended Princeton in earlier years) might have been feeling:

As discussed earlier, most respondents were attending Princeton during the 70's, at a time when the Black Power Movement was still influencing the attitudes of many Blacks. It is possible that Black individuals either chose to or felt pressure to come together with other Blacks on campus because of the belief that Blacks must join in solidarity to combat a White oppressor. As the few blacks in a white environment it is understandable that respondents might have felt a need to look out for one another.

Breger, Esther.   "U. Releases Obama '85's Senior Thesis."     The Daily Princetonian.   26 February 2008.

Heyboer, Kelly.   "Analyzing Michelle Obama's Princeton Thesis."     The [New Jersey] Star-Ledger.   29 February 2008.

Ressner. Jeffrey.   "Michelle Obama Thesis Was on Racial Divide."     Politico .   23 February 2008.

By David Mikkelson

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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Michelle Obama facts for kids

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is a former First Lady of the United States and the wife of the 44th president of the U.S. , Barack Obama . She is also a lawyer and an author . She was the first African-American woman to serve as first lady.

Obama served as a role model for women and worked as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating. She supported American designers and was considered a fashion icon.

After her husband's presidency, Obama's influence has remained high. In 2020, she topped Gallup's poll of the most admired woman in America for the third year running. In 2021, Obama was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame .

Meeting Barack Obama

Let's move, film and television, the light we carry, michelle obama quotes, interesting facts about michelle obama, awards and honors, images for kids.

Obama was born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson at Provident Hospital of Cook County in Chicago , Illinois on January 17, 1964.

Robinson's childhood home was on the upper floor of 7436 South Euclid Avenue in Chicago's South Shore community area, which her parents rented from her great-aunt, who had the first floor. She was raised in what she describes as a "conventional" home, with "the mother at home, the father works, you have dinner around the table". Her elementary school was down the street. She and her family enjoyed playing games such as Monopoly , reading, and frequently saw extended family on both sides. She played the piano, learning from her great-aunt, who was a piano teacher. The Robinsons attended services at nearby South Shore United Methodist Church. They used to vacation in a rustic cabin in White Cloud, Michigan . She and her 21-month-older brother, Craig , skipped the second grade.

Her father suffered from multiple sclerosis , which had a profound emotional effect on her as she was growing up. She was determined to stay out of trouble and be a good student, which was what her father wanted for her. By sixth grade, Michelle joined a gifted class at Bryn Mawr Elementary School (later renamed Bouchet Academy). She attended Whitney Young High School , Chicago's first magnet high school, established as a selective enrollment school, where she was a classmate of Jesse Jackson 's daughter Santita . The round-trip commute from the Robinsons' South Side home to the Near West Side , where the school was located, took three hours.

Michelle recalled being fearful of how others would perceive her, but disregarded any negativity around her and used it "to fuel me, to keep me going". She recalled facing gender discrimination growing up, saying, for example, that rather than asking her for her opinion on a given subject, people commonly tended to ask what her older brother thought. She was on the honor roll for four years, took advanced placement classes, was a member of the National Honor Society , and served as student council treasurer. She graduated in 1981 as the salutatorian of her class.

Robinson was inspired to follow her brother to Princeton University , which she entered in 1981. She majored in sociology and minored in African-American studies, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1985.

Robinson recalls that some of her teachers in high school tried to dissuade her from applying, and that she had been warned against "setting my sights too high". She believed her brother's status as a student in good standing (he graduated in 1983) may have helped her during the admission process, but she was resolved to demonstrate her own worth. She has said she was overwhelmed during her first year, attributing this to the fact that neither of her parents had graduated from college, and that she had never spent time on a college campus.

The mother of a white roommate reportedly tried to get her daughter reassigned because of Michelle's race. Robinson said being at Princeton was the first time she became more aware of her ethnicity and, despite the willingness of her classmates and teachers to reach out to her, she still felt "like a visitor on campus".

While at Princeton, Robinson became involved with the Third World Center (now known as the Carl A. Fields Center), an academic and cultural group who supported minority students. She ran their daycare center, which also offered after school tutoring for older children.

Robinson pursued professional study, earning her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1988.

She met Barack Obama when they were among the few African Americans at their law firm, Sidley Austin LLP. She was assigned to mentor him while he was a summer associate. Their relationship started with a business lunch and then a community organization meeting where he first impressed her. They were married on October 3, 1992.

Following law school, Obama became an associate at the Chicago office of the law firm Sidley & Austin, where she met her future husband Barack. At the firm, she worked on marketing and intellectual property law. She continues to hold her law license, but as she no longer needs it for her work, she has kept it on a voluntary inactive status since 1993.

In 1991, she held public sector positions in the Chicago city government as an Assistant to the Mayor , and as Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development. In 1993, she became executive director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit organization encouraging young people to work on social issues in nonprofit groups and government agencies. She worked there nearly four years and set fundraising records for the organization that still stood twelve years after she had left.

In 1996, Obama served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago , where she developed the university's Community Service Center. In 2002, she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May 2005, as vice president for Community and External Affairs.

She continued to hold the University of Chicago Hospitals position during the primary campaign of 2008, but cut back to part-time in order to spend time with her daughters as well as work for her husband's election. She subsequently took a leave of absence from her job.

First Lady of the United States (2009–2017)

During her early months as First Lady, Obama visited homeless shelters and soup kitchens . She also sent representatives to schools and advocated public service.

Some initiatives of First Lady Michelle Obama included advocating on behalf of military families, helping working women balance career and family, encouraging national service, and promoting the arts and arts education. Obama made supporting military families and spouses a personal mission and increasingly bonded with military families. In April 2012, Obama and her husband were awarded the Jerald Washington Memorial Founders' Award by the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV). The award is the highest honor given to homeless veteran advocates.

Obama's predecessors Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush supported the organic movement by instructing the White House kitchens to buy organic food. Obama extended their support of healthy eating by planting the White House Kitchen Garden, an organic garden, the first White House vegetable garden since Eleanor Roosevelt served as First Lady. She also had bee hives installed on the South Lawn of the White House. The garden supplied organic produce and honey for the meals of the First Family and for state dinners and other official gatherings.

In January 2010, Obama undertook her first lead role in an administration-wide initiative, which she named " Let's Move! ", to make progress in reversing the 21st-century trend of childhood obesity . On February 9, 2010, the first lady announced Let's Move! and President Barack Obama created the Task Force on Childhood Obesity to review all current programs and create a national plan for change.

Michelle Obama said her goal was to make this effort her legacy: "I want to leave something behind that we can say, 'Because of this time that this person spent here, this thing has changed.' And my hope is that that's going to be in the area of childhood obesity." Her 2012 book American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America is based on her experiences with the garden and promotes healthy eating.

Subsequent activities (2018–present)

In 2021, Obama announced that she was "moving toward retirement". Though she continues to be active in political campaigns, the former first lady is reducing the amount of work to spend more time with her husband.

Obama's memoir, Becoming , was released in November 2018. By November 2019, it had sold 11.5 million copies. A documentary titled Becoming , which chronicles Obama's book tour promoting the memoir, was released on Netflix on May 6, 2020. She received Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording in 2020 for audio book.

In July 2020, she premiered a podcast titled The Michelle Obama Podcast . In February 2021, Obama was announced as an executive producer and presenter on a children's cooking show , Waffles + Mochi . It was released by Netflix on March 16, 2021. On September 11, 2021, the Obamas attended a 9/11 memorial to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the attacks. More recently, Regina Hicks had signed a deal with Netflix alongside her and Barack 's Higher Ground production company to develop comedies. She received two Children's and Family Emmy Awards at the 1st Children's and Family Emmy Awards: for Outstanding Short Form Program ( We the People ) and Outstanding Preschool Animated Series ( Ada Twist, Scientist ).

Obama made guest appearances in the television comedies, including Parks and Recreation in 2014, and Black-ish in 2022, receiving Black Reel Awards for Television nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress, Comedy Series. She produced the documentary film Crip Camp (2020), and the biographical drama film Rustin (2023).

On July 21, 2022, it was announced that Obama's next book, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times , would be published in November 2022. The book was published by Penguin Random House. In 2023, Obama received Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special nomination at the 75th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards for Netflix documentary film The Light We Carry: Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey .

Michelle Obama's brother, Craig Robinson, is the head coach of the Oregon State University men's basketball team. Her father, Fraser Robinson, was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department. Her mother Marion Robinson stayed home to raise her and her brother Craig. Her children are Malia (born July 4, 1998) and Sasha (born June 10, 2001).

• "I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them."
• "When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don't stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high."
• "Strong men, men who are truly role models, don't need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful."
• "Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude."
• "Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own."

• She was the first African American first lady of the United States of America.
• Her brother Craig is only 21 months older than her so people thought they were twins when they were growing up.
• Michelle Obama served as a role model for women.
• She worked as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition , physical activity, and healthy eating.
• Michelle Obama began the Let's Move! campaign to help stop the United State’s childhood obesity epidemic.
• She supported American designers and was considered a fashion icon.
• Michelle skipped second grade.
• Michelle Obama isn't a fan of the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, because she believes you continue to grow, change, learn and do different things even as an adult.

In November 2023, Obama was named to the BBC 's 100 Women list.

The Obama family home in Chicago

The Obamas attend a church service in Washington, D.C., January 2013.

Malia and Sasha Obama prepare to enter Air Force One, Michelle Obama and President Obama behind them, on March 7, 2015.

Michelle and Barack Obama with King Salman of Saudi Arabia and members of the Saudi royal family, January 27, 2015

Obama speaks at a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign rally at Southern New Hampshire University, October 13, 2016.

Obama wore Isabel Toledo clothes made of St. Gallen Embroidery to the 2009 presidential inauguration .

Obama in Jason Wu

Obama with her husband attend a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery after the Inauguration of Joe Biden in 2021

• This page was last modified on 6 March 2024, at 07:15. Suggest an edit .

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The Impact of Michelle Obama's Speech

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Published: Mar 16, 2024

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Personal connection and empathy, powerful rhetoric, addressing concerns and inspiring hope, impact and legacy.

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Beyoncé and Michelle Obama's Complete Friendship Timeline Is So Inspiring

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The bad news: none of us are personal friends with Beyoncé or Michelle Obama . The good news: They are friends with each other. These icons have been close since back in 2009 (when Bey sang at the inauguration!) and the time has come to look back on a friendship that can only be described as equal parts inspiring and beautiful. To put it simply: They are constantly raising the bar for all of us!

January 20, 2009

Beyoncé sings "At Last" at President Barack Obama 's inauguration, and it's completely stunning.

May 3, 2011

Bey surprises students in Harlem as part of Michelle's "Let's Move" initiative. Love that she stepped out to support FLOTUS!

May 22, 2011

Michelle joins family and friends to introduce Beyoncé's performance of "Run the World (Girls)" at the Billboard Music Awards.

July 16, 2012

Beyoncé writes a letter to Michelle to thank her for everything she's doing for our country. Listen below and try not to cry.

September 18, 2012

Jay Z and Beyoncé hold a fundraiser for President Obama. According to the Washington Post , Bey introduced POTUS by saying “I can’t tell you how proud we are to host tonight’s event with President Obama.... We believe in his vision.”

January 21, 2013

Jay and Bey attend Obama's second inauguration! We were living through the best of times and didn't even realize it.

July 30, 2015

Michelle is asked what she'd do if she wasn't First Lady of the United States and says, “I would be Beyoncé.” The only acceptable answer to this question.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Michelle Obama (archived) (@michelleobama44)

September 26, 2015

Bey and Michelle share a sweet hug on stage at the Global Citizen Festival.

January 17, 2019

Bey posts a pic of Michelle as a little girl in honor of her birthday.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Beyoncé (@beyonce)

April 16, 2019

Michelle is named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People, and Beyoncé writes an entire essay about her. She kicks it off by saying, "Loving Michelle Obama wasn’t much of a choice. It was something that came naturally, because of how she carried herself. Because she resembled us and was moving in spaces where, as black Americans, we weren’t exactly meant to be, she seemed so powerful. When I first met her, I was embraced by a warm, regal, confident woman who possessed a reassuring calm, on the eve of President Obama’s historic first Inauguration. The way she looked, walked and spoke, in that warm but authoritative tone, we saw our mothers and sisters. She was strong and ambitious and spoke her mind without sacrificing honesty or empathy. That takes a lot of courage and discipline."

Bey goes on to add, "She would’ve been impactful simply by being in the White House, the first African-American First Lady. But she also used her position of power to improve the world around her. Her initiative Reach Higher, for example, encourages young people to complete their education past high school. She empowers all of us to interrogate our fears and surpass greatness. I’m honored to know such a brilliant black woman who’s spoken about the sacrifice it takes to balance her passions while remaining a supportive partner and mother, and now a best-selling author with Becoming . She has continued to open herself up, even if it meant being criticized. She has continued to be a portrait of grace."

'Becoming' by Michelle Obama

She ended the essay saying, "I am so grateful that my daughters and my son live in a world where Michelle Obama shines as a beacon of hope who inspires all of us to do better and to be better."

April 18, 2019

Michelle drops her ICONIC "Hey, Queen! Girl, you have done it again" video message to Bey to celebrate the release of Homecoming .

So proud of my girl! The Queen has done it again. @Beyonce , thank you for always living your truth. #Homecoming pic.twitter.com/NlNkKIwqN6 — Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) April 18, 2019

June 21, 2022

Michelle hops on Twitter to tell everyone how obsessed she is with "Break My Soul"—and references her ~girl you have done it again~ meme while she's at it.

Queen @Beyonce , you’ve done it again! “Break My Soul” is the song we all need right now, and I can't help but dance and sing along while listening to it. Can’t wait for the album! 💃🏿 — Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) June 21, 2022

September 4, 2023

Michelle joins the rest of the world in wishing Beyoncé happy birthday on Twitter!

Michelle Obama wishes Beyoncé a happy birthday: “Happy birthday, Bey! Your talent and music has brought so much joy to all of our lives. You're truly one-of-one, and I’m just so proud of you! 👑🐝” pic.twitter.com/UyZwv3TEXr — Pop Crave (@PopCrave) September 4, 2023

April 2, 2024

Michelle calls out Cowboy Carter for being an iconic masterpiece and encourages people to vote while she's at it!

. @Beyonce , you are a record-breaker and history-maker. With Cowboy Carter, you have changed the game once again by helping redefine a music genre and transform our culture. I am so proud of you! pic.twitter.com/oXKao4UpK9 — Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) April 2, 2024

We'll keep this updated with more Beyoncé and Michelle friendship moments as they come. 'Til then, busy listening to "Bodyguard" and living in the past (2009).

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Michelle Obama is part of the BeyHive, too.

On Tuesday, the former First Lady shared a tweet thread celebrating Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter , describing the musician as a "history-maker" who has "changed the game once again." She also encouraged listeners to register to vote, quoting a line on " Ya Ya ."

"With Cowboy Carter , you have changed the game once again by helping redefine a music genre and transform our culture. I am so proud of you!" Obama wrote. "Cowboy Carter is a reminder that despite everything we've been through to be heard, seen, and recognized, we can still dance, sing, and be who we are unapologetically. This album reminds us that we ALL have power."

Obama then transitioned to call for people to use the power of their voices to vote in this year's election. "There's power in our history, in our joy, and in our votes - and we can each use our own gifts and talents to make our voices heard on the issues that matter most to us," she wrote.

"As Queen Bey says at the end of Ya Ya, we need to ‘keep the faith' and ‘ VOTE!'" she wrote, linking to a website helping folks register to vote, and referencing the outro to "Ya Ya."

The song referenced by Obama featured a segue track named after Black country legend Linda Martell, who called the song "tune [that] stretches across a range of genres, and that's what makes it a unique listening experience." Beyoncé also sampled Nancy Sinatra's 1965 single, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin,'" on the track.

This isn't the first time the former FLOTUS shared a message following one of Beyoncé's releases. A video she recorded after the release of Homecoming became a meme in 2019 . "Hey, queen! Girl, you have done it again, constantly raising the bar for all of us and doing it flawlessly," Obama said in a video clip after Bey dropped her documentary after Coachella.

That same year, Beyoncé penned an essay about Obama, who was listed in Time ‘s Most Influential People list. "Loving Michelle Obama wasn't much of a choice," Beyoncé said in 2019. "It was something that came naturally, because of how she carried herself. Because she resembled us and was moving in spaces where, as black Americans, we weren't exactly meant to be, she seemed so powerful."

Beyoncé and her husband, Jay-Z, have been longtime supporters of the Obamas, especially during President Obama's  2012   reelection   campaign  (Beyoncé even  sang the National Anthem  at his second inauguration). The Obamas, in turn, have been vocal fans of the two musicians, placing their songs on various  public   playlists . Last July, Michelle Obama was even  spotted dancing  with Beyoncé's mother, Tina Knowles Lawson, at a Beyoncé and Jay-Z show in Paris, France.

Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter has had major moments of celebration over the weekend. She received praise from many of her collaborators , including Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton , and Martell, and also thanked Jack White for being an inspiration on the record. (He shared photos of a bouquet she sent him on Tuesday.)

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Jonathan Majors Avoids Jail Time for Assault Conviction

Mr. Majors, a rising movie star before his conviction in December, was sentenced to a domestic violence program for assaulting an ex-girlfriend last year.

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By Colin Moynihan

Jonathan Majors, a rising movie star who was found guilty last year of assaulting and harassing his then-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, was sentenced in Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday to 52 weeks of domestic violence programming, to take place in Los Angeles.

Mr. Majors had no immediate reaction as the sentence was announced. He could have faced up to a year in jail.

The sentencing hearing began with Ms. Jabbari standing to give a statement, saying that she had experienced “extreme physical and emotional pain” because of Mr. Majors and had been “held very tightly in the palm of his abusive hand.”

As she spoke, Mr. Majors, wearing a dark double-breasted suit and turtleneck, gazed down at a small leather-bound volume that was open on a table before him.

Ms. Jabbari told the court that when she was with Mr. Majors she had become a “different person” ­­— someone who was “small, scared and vulnerable.” She added, “I have seen his physical anger, and he does not have control over it.”

The district attorney’s office asked on Monday that Mr. Majors be sentenced to a year of domestic violence programming, with a prosecutor, Kelli Galaway, telling the court that his assault of Ms. Jabbari had been the “culmination of over a year of abuse.” Ms. Galaway added that Mr. Majors had shown a “complete lack of remorse.”

One of Mr. Majors’s lawyers, Priya Chaudhry, told the judge, Michael Gaffey, that her client maintained his innocence and planned to appeal his conviction.

Still, she said, Mr. Majors “is committed to growing and bettering himself.”

Mr. Majors’s conviction in December on assault and harassment charges — one misdemeanor and one violation — left his career in tatters. Marvel Studios dissolved its relationship with him. Searchlight Pictures said that it would not release “Magazine Dreams,” in which Mr. Majors played a fury-filled, steroid-taking bodybuilder.

And after the verdict, two women who had dated Mr. Majors between 2013 and 2019 described him to The New York Times as a controlling, threatening figure who had abused them and isolated them from friends and career pursuits. Mr. Majors denied the allegations.

Ms. Jabbari met Mr. Majors in 2021 on the set of the Marvel movie “ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ,” where she was working as a movement coach and he was playing a time-traveling supervillain named Kang the Conqueror.

The two lived together in London and New York, but their relationship splintered early one morning last March. Mr. Majors and Ms. Jabbari were inside a hired S.U.V. in Lower Manhattan when, she said, she saw a text message on his phone from another woman. Ms. Jabbari has said that she grabbed the phone and that Mr. Majors tried to pry it from her hand, breaking one of her fingers. He was arrested later that day.

Most people facing misdemeanor charges look for a way to resolve them with a plea agreement. But Mr. Majors went to trial late last year, apparently hoping for an acquittal that could revive his career. Ms. Chaudhry called Ms. Jabbari’s account of what took place inside the S.U.V. a “complete lie” and contended that Mr. Majors had been the victim.

Ms. Jabbari was arrested in October on a countercomplaint by Mr. Majors and charged with misdemeanor counts of assault and criminal mischief. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to proceed with that case, saying at the time that it lacked “prosecutorial merit.”

During his trial in December, Mr. Majors walked through courtroom hallways wearing sunglasses, sat at the defense table in the well of the courtroom with a gilded Bible and greeted supporters with kisses.

Ms. Jabbari took the stand , crying at times as she described a turbulent relationship in which Mr. Majors yelled at and berated her and once hurled a candle at her. After she grabbed his phone in the S.U.V., Ms. Jabbari testified, Mr. Majors twisted her hands and right arm and struck her in the head.

Ms. Chaudhry said Ms. Jabbari had falsely accused Mr. Majors as revenge because he had ended their relationship. After the S.U.V. ride, Ms. Chaudhry added, Ms. Jabbari went dancing with people she had met that night, letting some of them “twirl her ballroom style, while she spins on the very finger she now claims was freshly broken.”

While testifying, Ms. Jabbari said that she went dancing because she didn’t “want to be alone at that point.”

In her summation , Ms. Chaudhry depicted Ms. Jabbari as having given inconsistent testimony filled with contradictions and urged jurors to reject her “pretty little lies.” Ms. Galaway, the prosecutor, told jurors that the case was about “control, domination, manipulation and abuse,” saying that Mr. Majors had harassed and assaulted Ms. Jabbari and cut her off from friends and family.

An audio recording from 2022 played at one point during the trial offered some insight into how Mr. Majors may have viewed himself and his relationship with Ms. Jabbari. He told her she should care for him as Coretta Scott King had cared for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and as Michelle Obama cared for former President Barack Obama.

“I’m a great man. A great man. I am doing great things,” Mr. Majors said, adding: “The woman that supports me, the one I support, needs to be a great woman and make sacrifices.”

Few actors have fallen as quickly and dramatically as Mr. Majors. And few actors had seemed as ready-made for stardom.

Soon after graduating from Yale’s drama school, Mr. Majors was cast in “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” a 2019 film about life in an increasingly gentrified city. Other roles followed. In 2020 he was given the part of Kang, a character who was to appear in several Marvel films, including “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty,” set for 2026, and “Avengers: Secret Wars,” planned for 2027.

With a seemingly secure future as an anchor actor in what were seen as likely blockbusters, Mr. Majors also explored more complex roles. Critics praised his nuanced portrayal in “Magazine Dreams” of an awkward character who is driven by a thirst for fame and plagued by self-doubt and rage.

There was also a volatile side to Mr. Majors himself, according to some people who knew him before he joined the Marvel universe. On the set of the HBO series “Lovecraft Country,” he was said to have had confrontations with female co-workers that led them to complain to the network, The Times found in interviews with his former colleagues.

A few weeks after the verdict in the assault trial, Mr. Majors appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where he said he had been “absolutely shocked” by the jury’s decision and continued to dispute Ms. Jabbari’s account.

Last month, Ms. Jabbari sued Mr. Majors in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of battery, infliction of emotional distress and defamation. Her complaint said that he had engaged in “a pattern of pervasive domestic abuse” in London, New York and Los Angeles and had on one occasion banged her head against a marble floor, tried to strangle her and threatened to kill her.

Ms. Chaudhry did not respond to a request on Friday for comment on that lawsuit. Just after it was filed, she said that Mr. Majors was preparing a countersuit.

Mr. Majors left the courthouse after the sentencing on Monday, accompanied by his lawyers, walked past a group of reporters without saying anything and got into a black van with tinted windows. Just before it pulled away, he leaned out of a window and shook hands with a court officer.

Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.