A previously unseen archive of documents belonging to President Barack Obama’s father has been unearthed by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, according to a report.
The documents provide previously unknown insight into the life of Barack Hussein Obama Sr., who emigrated from “a small village” in Kenya to the United States in the 1960s.
The letters were discovered three years ago by archivist Christine McKay, according to The New York Times which first reported the story, but only recently have been publicly reported.
The spokeswoman for the center did not respond to a request for comment.
The documents include personal letters and appeals to American colleges for financial aid, as well as letters of recommendation from professors and advisers during his time in America attending the University of Hawaii and Harvard University.
“It has been my long cherished ambition to further my studies in America and therefore any slight assistance which you would be kind enough to offer with regard to this would be very much appreciated,” he wrote in a letter to African-American Institute in 1958, the newspaper reported.
After arriving in the country and pursuing studies at the University of Hawaii, an adviser wrote in a recommendation letter: "I have always found his work superior… He has impressed everyone with being a genuinely enlightened twentieth-century man."
“The papers are rich. They tell a fascinating, traditional, self-made man’s story,” Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the center’s director, told the Times.
“There’s a reason to bear witness to the personal legacy that is here.”
Nobody at the Schomburg Center was available for comment Monday.
The president said that he would be interested in reviewing the documents after he leaves office, the paper said, citing a “senior White House official.”
