(Image source: NY Daily News)

BY: LEXA DECKERT

You're watching multisource video news analysis from Newsy

Imagine if Barack Obama had never been... an Obama.
Recently, news broke -- that his parents were thinking about giving him up for adoption -- possibly changing the course of American history.
Kenya’s Daily Nation has the details - and the memo revealing their plans.

“...the Kenyan, then a 24-year-old student in the United States, had told his advisor at the University of Hawaii that he and his wife, Ann Dunham, planned to give up their child. -- ‘Subject (Obama Snr) got his USC (US citizen) wife 'Hapai' (Hawaiian for pregnant) and although they were married, they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away.’”


The revelation was discovered while Globe Reporter Sally Jacobs was doing research for her new book -- “The Other Barack: The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father."
Jacobs got the information from 1961 immigration forms obtained through a Freedom of Information Act.
It’s unclear how serious Obama’s parents were about idea of adoption. But New York Daily News speculates - it may have been an attempt by Obama Sr.---  trying to stay out of trouble...

“His student advisor ... told immigration officials that Barack Obama Sr. ‘has been running around with several girls since he first arrived here...’ Obama ‘replied that he would 'try' to stay away from the girls.’ Instead, he began dating Dunham. The elder Obama vowed to investigators in April 1961 that he had divorced his wife in Kenya and that he and Dunham planned to give up their child.”

Although Obama Jr. did not know any of this before the information was released, he had previously wondered about adoption -- The Independent reports...

“President Obama, in his memoir Dreams from My Father, notes hypothetically that it would have made sense for his parents to at least have considered adoption, given the challenge of raising a mixed-race child born then, before the 1960s civil rights legislation.”


But there are some serious denials about the adoption story -- family and friends saying they never knew anything about it -- and that Ms. Dunham was excited. The Sydney Morning Herald reports...


“...Ms Dunham, who was also studying at Hawaii, spoke optimistically at the time about a future with her new husband and their child...”


In the midst of curiosity and debate, The Christian Science Monitor says adoption shouldn’t matter.


“Let’s be clear, though: This doesn’t mean you can’t be president if you’re not raised by birth parents. Two modern US chief executives were, or considered themselves to be, adopted. Gerald Ford is the first on this list... [his mom] married a paint salesman named Gerald Rudolf Ford, who gave her young son his name. Then there’s Bill Clinton... When the future president was 14, he assumed his stepdad’s name...”


President Obama has made no comment about this new-found information.


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