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Ann Dunham
Stanley Ann Dunham (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995) was an American anthropologist who specialized in the economic anthropology and rural development of Indonesia. Born in Wichita, Kansas, she studied at the East–West Center and at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Honolulu, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts (1967), a Master of Arts (1974), and a PhD (1992) in anthropology.
Drawing on her interest in craftsmanship, weaving, and the role of women in cottage industries, Dunham conducted research on women's work on the island of Java and blacksmithing in Indonesia. To address the problem of poverty in rural villages, she designed microcredit programs while working as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development. In Jakarta, she worked for the Ford Foundation, and consulted for the Asian Development Bank in Pakistan. Towards the latter part of her life, she worked with Bank Rakyat Indonesia, where she helped apply her research to the largest microfinance program in the world.
As the mother of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, her anthropological research faced renewed interest after his election, with new symposiums, endowments, fellowships, exhibitions, and publications dedicated to reexamining her life and upholding her legacy.
Dunham was born on November 29, 1942, in Wichita, Kansas, the only child of Madelyn Lee Payne and Stanley Armour Dunham. She was of predominantly English ancestry, with small amounts of Scottish, Welsh, Irish, German and Swiss-German. Wild Bill Hickok was her sixth cousin, five times removed. Ancestry.com claimed on July 30, 2012, after using a combination of old documents and yDNA analysis, that Dunham's mother was descended from John Punch, an African slave in seventeenth-century colonial Virginia.
Her parents were born in Kansas and met in Wichita, where they married on May 5, 1940. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, her father joined the United States Army, and her mother worked at a Boeing plant in Wichita. According to Dunham, she was named after her father because he wanted a son, though her relatives doubt this story. Her maternal uncle recalled that her mother named Dunham after her favorite actress Bette Davis' character (Stanley Timberlake) in the film In This Our Life because she thought Stanley, as a girl's name, sounded sophisticated. As a child and teenager, she was known as Stanley. Other children teased her about her name. Nonetheless, she used it through high school, "apologizing for it each time she introduced herself in a new town." By the time Dunham began attending college, she was known by her middle name, Ann, instead.
After World War II, Dunham's family moved from Wichita to California while her father attended the University of California, Berkeley. In 1948, they moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma, and from there to Vernon, Texas, and then to El Dorado, Kansas. In 1955, the family moved to Seattle, Washington, where her father was employed as a furniture salesman and her mother worked as vice president of a bank. They lived in an apartment complex in the Wedgwood neighborhood where she attended Nathan Eckstein Junior High School.
In 1957, Dunham's family moved to Mercer Island, an Eastside suburb of Seattle. Dunham's parents wanted their daughter to attend the newly opened Mercer Island High School. At the school, teachers Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman taught the importance of challenging social norms and questioning authority to the young Dunham, and she took the lessons to heart: "She felt she didn't need to date or marry or have children." One classmate remembered her as "intellectually way more mature than we were and a little bit ahead of her time, in an off-center way", and a high school friend described her as knowledgeable and progressive: "If you were concerned about something going wrong in the world, Stanley would know about it first. We were liberals before we knew what liberals were." Another called her "the original feminist". She went through high school "reading beatnik poets and French existentialists".
On August 21, 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state to be admitted into the Union. Dunham's parents sought business opportunities in the new state, and after graduating from high school in 1960, Dunham and her family moved to Honolulu. Dunham enrolled at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
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Ann Dunham
Stanley Ann Dunham (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995) was an American anthropologist who specialized in the economic anthropology and rural development of Indonesia. Born in Wichita, Kansas, she studied at the East–West Center and at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Honolulu, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts (1967), a Master of Arts (1974), and a PhD (1992) in anthropology.
Drawing on her interest in craftsmanship, weaving, and the role of women in cottage industries, Dunham conducted research on women's work on the island of Java and blacksmithing in Indonesia. To address the problem of poverty in rural villages, she designed microcredit programs while working as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development. In Jakarta, she worked for the Ford Foundation, and consulted for the Asian Development Bank in Pakistan. Towards the latter part of her life, she worked with Bank Rakyat Indonesia, where she helped apply her research to the largest microfinance program in the world.
As the mother of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, her anthropological research faced renewed interest after his election, with new symposiums, endowments, fellowships, exhibitions, and publications dedicated to reexamining her life and upholding her legacy.
Dunham was born on November 29, 1942, in Wichita, Kansas, the only child of Madelyn Lee Payne and Stanley Armour Dunham. She was of predominantly English ancestry, with small amounts of Scottish, Welsh, Irish, German and Swiss-German. Wild Bill Hickok was her sixth cousin, five times removed. Ancestry.com claimed on July 30, 2012, after using a combination of old documents and yDNA analysis, that Dunham's mother was descended from John Punch, an African slave in seventeenth-century colonial Virginia.
Her parents were born in Kansas and met in Wichita, where they married on May 5, 1940. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, her father joined the United States Army, and her mother worked at a Boeing plant in Wichita. According to Dunham, she was named after her father because he wanted a son, though her relatives doubt this story. Her maternal uncle recalled that her mother named Dunham after her favorite actress Bette Davis' character (Stanley Timberlake) in the film In This Our Life because she thought Stanley, as a girl's name, sounded sophisticated. As a child and teenager, she was known as Stanley. Other children teased her about her name. Nonetheless, she used it through high school, "apologizing for it each time she introduced herself in a new town." By the time Dunham began attending college, she was known by her middle name, Ann, instead.
After World War II, Dunham's family moved from Wichita to California while her father attended the University of California, Berkeley. In 1948, they moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma, and from there to Vernon, Texas, and then to El Dorado, Kansas. In 1955, the family moved to Seattle, Washington, where her father was employed as a furniture salesman and her mother worked as vice president of a bank. They lived in an apartment complex in the Wedgwood neighborhood where she attended Nathan Eckstein Junior High School.
In 1957, Dunham's family moved to Mercer Island, an Eastside suburb of Seattle. Dunham's parents wanted their daughter to attend the newly opened Mercer Island High School. At the school, teachers Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman taught the importance of challenging social norms and questioning authority to the young Dunham, and she took the lessons to heart: "She felt she didn't need to date or marry or have children." One classmate remembered her as "intellectually way more mature than we were and a little bit ahead of her time, in an off-center way", and a high school friend described her as knowledgeable and progressive: "If you were concerned about something going wrong in the world, Stanley would know about it first. We were liberals before we knew what liberals were." Another called her "the original feminist". She went through high school "reading beatnik poets and French existentialists".
On August 21, 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state to be admitted into the Union. Dunham's parents sought business opportunities in the new state, and after graduating from high school in 1960, Dunham and her family moved to Honolulu. Dunham enrolled at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.