From the Whitewashed Shack to the White House

It has been 159 years since Jim Robinson was born into slavery. Robinson, born on a plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina, lived as a slave, picking rice on the Friendfield Plantation and living in a small house with four or five other slave families. After the Civil War, Jim and his family lived as free sharecroppers in Georgetown. When Robinson died in the late 1800s, few people knew what he did or who he was. In fact, historians can only speculate where his body is buried. But today, over a century-and-a-half later, Jim’s life has become the beginning of a miraculous family story. The story of his great-great-granddaughter, Michelle Obama, our First Lady.

A Chicago Tribune article titled, “Michelle Obama’s Family: From Slavery to White House,” tells the amazing story of Michelle’s father’s family. Jim, who lived as a slave until he was fifteen years old, was illiterate and never ventured far from the plantation where he lived. In 1884, Jim’s wife gave birth to Fraser Robinson, who was illiterate early on in life but later taught himself to read and write. Fraser began the Robinson family tradition of pursuing education by bringing home the black newspaper “Palmetto Leader and Grit” for his kids to read. One of the children was Fraser Robinson Jr., Fraser Senior’s oldest son and Michelle Obama’s grandfather.

Born in 1912, Fraser Jr. was the first Robinson to receive a legitimate education after he graduated from high school in 1930. Fraser Jr. faced rough times in Georgetown because of segregation and the Depression. Because of this, Michelle’s grandfather made the decision to move to Chicago in search of a steady job. It was in Chicago where Fraser got married and had a son named Fraser Robinson III, Michelle’s father. Fraser III didn’t get a college education, but he helped guide Michelle to Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Now, Michelle will be using her family’s emphasis on knowledge and education to guide her through the responsibilities of the First Lady.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and our study of the history of slavery, we can see that being literate and educated was one of the key differences between slaves and their owners. In Huck Finn, we can all see that Jim is a smart, kind man, but he is also ignorant. This ignorance is the reason that Huck can take advantage of the slave so much, because he can cheat or lie to Jim and he won’t know the difference. But the Robinson family worked for four generations to overcome the education hurdle that kept them from being equal to other Americans, even after slavery ended.

Through decades of hard work, Michelle Obama’s family not only helped catapult her from the slums of slavery and illiteracy, they gave her the chance to become the first African-American First Lady. The White House was built by slaves like her great-great-grandfather, but thanks to the work ethic of his descendants, Michelle is continuing the tradition of hard work with her intellect and leadership skills, and not her body.