How did Obama Sr. get to America?
1960:
Feb. 12: Mboya meets JFK (for second? time) on campaign trail
Mar. 7: Mboya on cover of Time magazine
before July 26: in need of $90k for airfare AASF has Jackie Robinson met with VP Nixon to lobby State Dept.for funds for AASF, Nixon agrees but no success
Summer-Fall: Fifteen former French, British, and Belgian colonies in Africa became independent
July 26: Mboya flew to Cape Cod to meet Sen. JFK to have him lobby the State Dept. Accompanying Mboya were his brother Alphonse (who was studying at Antioch College), William Scheinman, and Frank Montero, president of AASF.
Scheinman provided a thorough briefing about the situation of the East African students and asked the senator if he would take up their cause with the State Department. Kennedy doubted that he would have any more success on this front than Nixon. He discussed the options for private funding and promised a donation of $5,000 from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation as long as the AASF promised not to publicize his involvement.
Senator Kennedy followed up with a call to his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, executive director of the Kennedy Foundation, asking him to find out if other private foundations would make contributions. Shriver's contacts over the next few days yielded no additional support.
JFK then recommended that the Kennedy Foundation contribute the entire amount needed for the 1960 airlift. In addition to this initial $100,000 contribution, the foundation would pledge up to $100,000 more to assist students with basic living expenses in the United States. Aug. 10 The AASF was informed about this decision and reminded again not to publicize the donation.
Word did leak out, however, and the Nixon campaign learned that the Kennedy Foundation was financing the airlift. A Nixon campaign staff member then went back to the State Department, which promptly reversed its previous decisions and offered to provide $100,000 for the project. The AASF board ultimately accepted the Kennedy Foundation's support and urged the State Department to make its funding available to other needy African students.
Aug. 16 Sen. Hugh Scott (R-PA) publicly praises State Dept. and neglects to mention Joe Kennedy Foundation’s earlier donation.
Aug. 17 On the Senate floor, Sen. Scott charged, according to an article in The New York Times "that a charitable foundation operated by the family of Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic Presidential candidate had 'outbid' the Government and would foot the $100,000 bill. He said this had been done for 'blatant political purposes.' Senator Kennedy took the floor and read a telegram from Frank Montero, head of the African American Students Foundation, refuting this charge. The Massachusetts Senator said it was the 'most unfair, distorted and malignant attack I have heard in fourteen years in politics.'"
Other senators, from both sides of the aisle, came out in support of Kennedy. Vice President Nixon also appeared to distance himself from Scott's accusations. Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, subsequently attacked the State Department's apparent surrender to partisan politics and sent a letter to Secretary of State Christian Herter demanding answers to a series of questions regarding his department's involvement in the affair.
The controversy received a good deal of attention in the press over the next few weeks. Commentary in African American newspapers was especially critical. A writer in The Pittsburgh Courier editorialized: "One of Nixon's henchmen showed State the deep point that the Kennedy gift would be worth a lot of Negro votes, which it would be best for Nixon to have in a tight contest, so all of a sudden State recalled that it had been for the project from the beginning!"
Mid-September: "Airlift Africa, 1960" brought 295 students to New York City on four separate flights. (Many people referred to it as "The Kennedy Airlift.") Among those meeting with the students during their orientation week were Eunice Shriver of the Kennedy Foundation, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and Malcolm X. The students enrolled in colleges and high schools in forty-one states and several Canadian provinces.
A large proportion of the students would subsequently assume leadership positions in government and the professions in their home countries. One of them was the future Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya. Another Kenyan, a brilliant 23-year-old named Barack Obama (arrived in NYC 9/11/60), was inspired by the 1959 airlift and made his own way to the University of Hawaii. The first African to study in Hawaii, Obama was supported in part by an AASF scholarship fund set up by Jackie Robinson. He graduated at the top of his class. At the university, he met and married an American student named Ann Dunham. Their son, Barack H. Obama Jr., was born on August 4, 1961.