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Marian Lois Robinson (b. Marian Lois Shields; July 30, 1937, Chicago, Illinois – d. May 31, 2024, Chicago, Illinois) was the mother of Michelle Obama, former first lady of the United States, and Craig Robinson, a basketball executive. She was the mother-in-law of Barack Obama, the former president of the United States.
Marian Shields was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 30, 1937, the fourth of seven siblings; five sisters, followed by two brothers, born to Purnell Nathaniel Shields, a house painter and carpenter, and his wife Rebecca Jumper, a licensed practical nurse. Her parents later separated. Both parents had multi-racial ancestry. Her mother's grandfather, Dolphus T. Shields (c. 1860–1950), was a descendant of slavery, with his mother a slave and his white father the heir of the slaveowner. He had moved from rural Georgia to Birmingham, Alabama, where he established his own carpentry and tool sharpening business. His descendants moved to Chicago during the Great Migration.
Marian Shields married Fraser Robinson III on October 27, 1960, in Chicago. They had two children together, Craig Malcolm and Michelle LaVaughn, named after Fraser's mother. Fraser died from multiple sclerosis in 1991.
Robinson worked as a secretary for mail-order retailer Spiegel, the University of Chicago, and a bank. In the late 1960s, Shields lived with her family in a rented second floor apartment of a brick bungalow on the South Side of Chicago that belonged to her aunt Robbie and her husband Terry. This is where she raised her two children, Michelle and Craig, and continued to live until she moved to the White House with the Obamas. Michelle Obama, in her book Becoming, describes her mother's strong attachment to her Chicago home and her commitment to raising her children as a stay-at-home mother. Shields resumed work as an executive assistant at a bank when her daughter Michelle started high school.
Robinson died in Chicago on May 31, 2024, at the age of 86. In a joint statement, Michelle and Barack said that Shields "had a way of summing up the truths about life in a word or two, maybe a quick phrase that made everyone around her stop and think" and that "In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example."
Michelle described her mother as forthright and honest and spoke of her implacability and her silent support as a child and beyond. Shields used to take her daughter Michelle to the library long before she started school and used to sit beside her as she learned to read and write. Usually, the kind of mother who expected her children to settle their own disputes, Shields was quick to see real distress and stepped in to help when needed. For example, when Michelle was in second grade and was distressed because of being devalued by a teacher, Shields advocated for her and was instrumental in getting her daughter better learning opportunities at school. Shields encouraged her children to communicate with her about all subjects by being available when needed and giving practical advice. She entertained Michelle's school friends when they visited and enabled her to make her own choices in important matters.
While Michelle and Barack Obama campaigned for his candidacy for president in 2008, Robinson helped them by providing support to her granddaughters, Malia and Sasha Obama. During former President Barack Obama's two-term presidency, Robinson lived at the White House with the First Family.
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Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama’s Steadfast Mother, Dies at 86
Moving into the White House, she provided stability for her granddaughters in a national spotlight.
Katie Rogers, who reported from Washington, is the author of a book on first ladies.
Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama’s mother and an anchor of the Obama family who moved into the White House and provided stability for her two granddaughters as the family adjusted to Washington, died on Friday in Chicago. She was 86.
Her death was announced in a statement by Mrs. Obama, former President Barack Obama and other family members. The statement did not give a cause.
Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Ms. Robinson was known as a down-to-earth matriarch who became an emotional ballast for her daughter and granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, but also for Mr. Obama.
When Mr. Obama became the first Black person to win the presidency in November 2008, he watched the returns alongside his mother-in-law. Their hands were clasped as they watched their future change.
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But Mrs. Robinson stayed much the same. “Just show me how to work the washing machine and I’m good,” she said after moving into the White House, the Obamas recalled in their statement.
Mrs. Robinson was never comfortable with the trappings of the White House and much preferred to take her dinner on a TV tray in her third-floor suite. “The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the pope,” the family said.
In addition to Mrs. Obama, Mrs. Robinson’s survivors include her son, Craig, and six grandchildren. Her husband, Fraser Robinson III, died in 1991.
Mrs. Robinson’s move to Washington, in January 2009, was said at first to be temporary, to help her daughter and granddaughters adjust. At the time, she was hesitant to commit to a life inside a White House bubble, but even as she resisted, she revealed the resolve, and the sense of humor, that she had tried to instill in her children.
“In the end, I’ll do whatever,” she told reporters at the time. “I might fuss a little, but I’ll be there.”
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Mrs. Robinson resided in her White House suite for most of President Obama’s eight years in office. She continued the duties she had started during his first presidential campaign, including enforcing bedtimes for her granddaughters, running their baths and making sure they got to school on time. She eventually adjusted, attending events at the Kennedy Center, hosting friends from Chicago and occasionally hiring a babysitter to watch the girls.
“The girls needed her,” the family statement said. “And she ended up being our rock through it all.”
To her daughter, she had been a model of support. In her memoir, “Becoming,” Mrs. Obama wrote that she had wanted to be both a career woman and a “perfect” mother, as her own had been.
“I had so much — an education, a healthy sense of self, a deep arsenal of ambition,” she wrote. “And I was wise enough to credit my mother, in particular, with instilling it in me.”
Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born on July 29, 1937, in Chicago. Her father, Purnell Shields, had moved to Chicago from Alabama in the 1920s to escape the Jim Crow South. Her mother, Rebecca Jumper, was a nursing aide. As a young woman, Marian “fell quickly and madly in love with Fraser Robinson, another South Sider with a boxer’s strength and jazz lover’s cool,” the family said.
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The Robinsons were married in 1960. Craig Robinson was born in 1962, Michelle in 1964.
The Robinsons raised their children in a second-floor apartment on Euclid Avenue, on the South Side, where they interacted with a rotating cast of extended family members, including a great-aunt who taught piano and lived in the first-floor apartment.
Mrs. Obama said that her mother and other family members, including her older brother, largely shielded her from the civil rights protests that roiled Chicago and much of the nation in the late 1960s. Instead, she said, she grew up listening to the clinking of piano keys rising from the floor below.
When Mrs. Obama was in elementary school, Mrs. Robinson asked that her daughter be moved into a gifted third-grade class, an act of advocacy that Mrs. Obama said helped change her life.
As the Robinson children grew into adults, they said, she offered her support, whether Craig “decided to leave a lucrative finance job to pursue his dream of coaching basketball” or “Michelle married a guy crazy enough to go into politics.”
Mrs. Robinson was alongside her daughter and granddaughters when they ran upstairs to see the White House residence for the first time, after Mr. Obama won the election in November 2008.
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Anita McBride, the former chief of staff to the first lady Laura Bush, said that the Bush daughters, Barbara and Jenna, invited the Obama family to a tour of what would be their new home.
Ms. McBride recalled in an interview that Mrs. Robinson was quiet as the White House chief usher greeted the family. But if she was nervous, she did not let it show.
“She followed her daughter and her granddaughters on this adventure,” Ms. McBride said. “It’s a reminder that as lofty as it may seem, and as unattainable as it may seem, anybody can live there, and they can make a family life, and a family home.”
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