Madelyn (Payne) Dunham
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Madelyn Lee (Payne) Dunham (1922 - 2008)

Madelyn Lee "Toot" Dunham formerly Payne
Born in Peru, Chautauqua, Kansas, United Statesmap
Ancestors ancestors
[sibling(s) unknown]
Wife of — married 5 May 1940 in El Dorado, Kansasmap
Descendants descendants
Died at age 86 in Honolulu, Oahu, Honolulu, Hawaii, United Statesmap
Profile last modified | Created 18 Jul 2009
This page has been accessed 8,145 times.
U.S. President Direct Ancestor
Madelyn (Payne) Dunham is an ancestor of a US President/Vice President
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Biography

Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham; October 26, 1922 – November 2, 2008, and Stanley Armour Dunham (March 23, 1918 – February 8, 1992) were the maternal grandparents of Barack Hussein Obama, the the 44th President of the United States. They raised Obama from age 10 in their Honolulu, Hawaii apartment, where the widowed Mrs. Dunham died on November 2, 2008, only two days before her grandson was elected.

On March 18, 2008, in a speech on race relations in Philadelphia in the wake of controversial videos of Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright surfacing, Obama famously and controversially compared him to his grandmother Madelyn:

"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

A week later on March 20, 2008, Obama compounded the controversy in his attempt at clarifying his earlier remarks, when he stated,

"... she is a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know...there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society."
[1]

In April 2008, Madelyn Dunham appeared briefly in her first campaign ad for her grandson, saying that Obama had "a lot of depth, and a broadness of view."

Due to Madelyn's deteriorating health in late October, the Obamas suspended their campaign for a couple days, while they travelled to Hawaii to spend some time with her.

On November 2, 2008 (November 3, 2008 in the continental U.S.), the Obama campaign announced that Madelyn Dunham had "died peacefully after a battle with cancer" in Hawaii.

Sources

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madelyn_Dunham




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Please add the US Presidents Project as a manager on this profile
Payne-8378 and Payne-16 appear to represent the same person because: Exact dates, same spouse and child. Parents to be merged as well
Payne-8028 and Payne-16 appear to represent the same person because: clearly intended to be the same person based on family lines, please approve this merge

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Categories: National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, Hawaii | US President Direct Ancestor