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Obama: Finding bonds in different worlds
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 | Race for the presidency The trips, the speeches, and the moments of Decision ’08. A look at the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain. more photos |
A negotiator
Obama arrived in Chicago in 1985 with a map of the city and a new job — community organizer.
Starting salary: Just over $10,000 plus enough money to buy a beat-up Honda.
Obama was a stranger to Chicago, but living abroad gave him experience as an outsider and a natural empathy for people without money and power, says Gerald Kellman, the man who hired him.
Working for the Developing Communities Project, Obama organized black churches on the industrial South Side, an area crippled by the loss of steel mills and factories.
"He had no trouble challenging power and challenging people on issues," Kellman says. "When it came to face-to-face situations, he valued civility a great deal. ... When it came to negotiating conflict, he was very good at that."
'Baby-faced Obama'
Obama became close to many of those he organized — women old enough to be his mother.
"This kid was so bright — I shouldn't say kid, this man was so bright, but he didn't hit you over the head with it," recalls Loretta Augustine-Herron, a founding member of the communities project. "He explained things so nobody would be offended."
The women nicknamed him "baby-face Obama." They chided him when he would eat just a spinach salad for lunch, laughed when he showed off his dance moves and joked about his seriousness.
Obama also was honing his writing skills, crafting vivid short stories inspired by his Chicago experiences. He showed them to fellow organizer Kruglik, who was impressed by how he had captured the feel of the streets. "I couldn't figure out how he had the time and energy to do it," he says.
In three years as an organizer, Obama became more pragmatic, thinking of his father, a civil servant in Africa.
"He had this sense of his dad being too idealistic ... and not accomplishing what he wanted," Kellman adds. (Obama later wrote that his father — who was killed in an automobile accident — had died "a bitter man.")
Obama was ready to move on — to Harvard Law School.
But he promised he'd return.
Self-effacing and the first
Obama entered Harvard older than many classmates, stepping into an incubator for America's elite — future Supreme Court justices, Fortune 500 leaders, U.S. senators and presidents.
Former classmates and professors remember him as an intellect with mature judgment, a conciliator who could see both sides of an issue.
The law school had plenty of achievers trying to edge out their competition but that wasn't Obama's style, says Laurence Tribe, a professor who hired him as a research assistant.
"He was not at all about credit but results," Tribe says. "He would often give credit to others that he did the work for."
Obama had two pivotal moments during his Harvard years: One came during his first summer when he worked at a Chicago corporate law firm and met another Harvard law graduate, Michelle Robinson, who would become his wife and the mother of their two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
The other was a professional triumph: Obama made headlines when he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, perhaps the most prestigious legal journal in the nation.
"He did not take that pound-on-my-chest attitude, 'Look at me, I'm the first one,'" says Earl Martin Phalen, a black classmate. "He was conscious of the historical significance but understood ... there was a responsibility."
With graduation, high-powered job offers flooded in. Obama chose another direction.
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