Michelle Obama's Princeton Roommate's Mother demanded a room change because Obama is black
Obama learned about roommates' mother's racism 27 years later.
NJ.com: True New Jersey
Claim: Before her first Princeton class even began, Michelle Obama’s assigned roommate moved out. The girl’s mother had demanded a room change, horrified to discover Michelle was Black. (The timing seems questionable)1
.. Obama was assigned a triple room in Princeton’s Pyne hall as a freshman with two white roommates. Halfway through the semester one of the roommates, Cathy, was moved to another room, Obama writes.
It wasn’t until the roommate, Catherine Donnelly, and her mother were interviewed by reporters during the 2008 campaign2 that Obama said she learned the truth.
Donnelly’s mother, a school teacher from New Orleans, went to the Princeton housing office and demanded her daughter be moved, she told reporters.
“I said I need to get my daughter’s room changed right away,” Alice Brown, the mother, told the Boston Globe in 2008. “I called my own mother and she said, ‘Take Catherine out of school immediately. Bring her home.’ I was very upset about the whole thing.”
Brown said in 2008 she came to regret the decision and was considering voting for Barack Obama. Her daughter said she rarely spoke to Michelle Obama after moving out and regretted not trying harder to become friends with her at Princeton.
For Michelle Obama, the incident illustrated how difficult it was to be black at Princeton in the early 1980s, she says in her book.
The future first lady was grateful, in retrospect, that the truth behind her roommate’s sudden departure was kept secret.
“I’m happy to say that I had no idea why,” Obama writes.
.. The lesson she finds in the roommate incident is one of hope - Alice Brown is now considering casting her vote for Barack Obama.
“What it demonstrated was the growth that this parent had,” Obama wrote. “What that told me is that, yes, the problems we face in this nation around race are real . . . but we also have to remember that people change and they grow.”
RELATED:
Catherine Donnelly’s True Confessions, blackoncampus.com, Jan 20, 2009.
Growing up in the South, Donnelly had gone to school with a handful of black classmates, but living together was quite another thing. Donnelly quickly warmed to Robinson, with her big sense of humor and riveting stories. But she was worried that her mother, who Donnelly said had grown up in a racist family, would not react well. She was right.
(Archive of original: Learning to be Michelle Obama, Boston Globe, June 15, 2008)
Notes:
**Later in the article it says “But when another room became available the following semester, Donnelly moved out. She says it was not because of her mother's racial concerns, but because the new room was larger”
Michelle Obama attended Princeton University from 1981 to 1985, matriculating as a freshman in the fall of 1981 and graduating with the Class of 1985. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology with a minor in African-American studies, graduating cum laude
FOOTNOTES:
This quote seems questionable because the article says: “when another room became available the following semester, Donnelly moved out.” Obama describes it as half-way through the semester.
Original article has redirect to advertising: (https://whgbetc.com/obama-michelle-college-roommate.pdf)