Claim:   Photograph shows Barack Obama with various family members.

Status:   Real photograph; inaccurate description.

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, March 2008]


Origins:   The photograph displayed above does include some members of Senator Barack Obama's extended family, but the captions added to the picture are fictitious ones created for denigrative political purposes. Someone simply slapped a bunch of names and descriptions that have no basis in reality onto a group picture; everyone in the photo other than Barack Obama himself is misidentified.

Several of the persons shown in this photograph are relatives and children of Senator Barack Obama's biological father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. The elder Obama was originally married in Kenya, and with his first wife had children who grew up in that country; he later came to Hawaii to attend college and there married an American woman. Barack Obama is a child of that second marriage, which ended when Barack was only a year or two old. (Altogether, Barack Obama Sr. fathered eight children by four different women, and Barack Jr.'s mother also remarried and had another child with her second husband, so Senator Obama has quite a large extended family when half-siblings, inlaws, and step-parents are taken into account.)

Barack Obama saw his biological father, who died in an automobile accident in 1982, on only one occasion after his parents separated. As far as we have been able to determine, Barack Obama did not meet any of the people shown in this photograph until he was an adult.

The persons pictured here are:

Front row (left to right): Auma Obama (Barack's half-sister), Kezia Obama (Auma's mother), Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama (the third wife of Barack's paternal grandfather), Zeituni Onyango (Barack's aunt).

Back row (left to right): Sayid Obama (Barack's uncle), Barack Obama, Abongo [Roy] Obama (Barack's half-brother), unidentified woman, Bernard Obama (Barack's half-brother), Abo Obama (Barack's half-brother).

Last updated:   20 March 2008

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  Sources:

    Cohen, Roger.   "Obama’s Brother in China."

    The New York Times.   17 March 2008.

    Flannery, Mike.   "The Man Behind the Hype: Who Is Barack Obama?"

    cbs2chicago.com.   8 February 2007.

    Fornek, Scott.   "Abongo (Roy) Obama."

    Chicago Sun-Times.   9 February 2007.

    Fornek, Scott.   "Auma Obama."

    Chicago Sun-Times.   9 February 2007.

    Fornek, Scott.   "Sarah Obama."

    Chicago Sun-Times.   9 February 2007.

    Pool, Hannah.   "Question Time."

    The Guardian.   16 November 2006.