The name "Barack Obama" was nowhere to be found, but there was no mistaking the message. More than a year after the White House released copies of the birth certificate on file in Hawaii, a conservative website still questioned whether the president is an American.
The "birthers" are easy to marginalize; a Gallup poll in 2011 found that only 13 percent of Americans believed Obama was probably or definitely born in another country. But how to account for a recent Pew Research Center poll that found that only 49 percent knew Obama is a Christian? Perhaps it's just that his name sounds unusual to many American ears.
The fact is, as certified by the state of Hawaii, Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. His birth certificate lists his mother's race as "Caucasian" and his father as "African." In June of the next year, his father — a brilliant economist from Kenya — would leave his young family to study at Harvard. He would never return.
His wandering mother took him to Java, the main island of Indonesia. His education there taught him not to show his emotions, author Scott says, and the story of his life with (and without) Ann Dunham explains a lot about her son.
