Birth Name: Malia Ann Obama
Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois
Date of Birth: July 4, 1998
Ethnicity:
*Luo Kenyan (paternal grandfather)
*English, as well as Scottish, Irish, German, Welsh, Swiss-German, French, possibly remote African (paternal grandmother)
*African-American (mainly), with distant English, Scottish, and Irish (mother)
Malia Obama is the eldest daughter of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, and of lawyer and writer Michelle Obama. She has a younger sister, Sasha Obama. Her uncle (mother’s brother) is college basketball coach and broadcaster Craig Robinson (not the actor of the same name).
Malia’s paternal grandparents were Barack Hussein Obama (the son of Onyango and Habibah Akumu) and Stanley Ann Dunham (the daughter of Stanley Armour Dunham and Madelyn Lee Payne). Malia’s paternal grandfather was Kenyan, of the Luo tribe. Malia’s paternal grandmother was American-born, had English, and smaller amounts (to varying degrees) of Scottish, Irish, German, Welsh, Swiss-German, and French ancestry.
Malia’s maternal grandparents are Fraser Robinson III (the son of Fraser Robinson, Jr. and LaVaughn Delores Johnson) and Marian Lois Shields (the daughter of Purnell Nathaniel Shields and Rebecca Jumper/Coleman).
Malia’s maternal grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, and great-great-great-grandparents, were all black. Malia’s mother also has some European ancestry on her family tree, with distant English, Scottish, and Irish, roots. One of Malia’s mother’s white ancestors was her own great-great-great-grandfather, Charles Marion Shields. Charles was the son of Henry Wells Shields and Christianna Payne Patterson.
Malia’s father has distant Irish ancestry, going back to his great-great-great-grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, who arrived in the States in 1850, from Moneygall in Ireland. Research done by a team of genealogists has suggested that Malia’s paternal grandmother had remote African-American ancestry (in the 1600s), through possible descent from a slave named John Punch.
In page 13 of his autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995), Malia’s father writes that a distant ancestor of his mother’s “had indeed been a full-blooded Cherokee” [Native American]. No Cherokee Native American ancestry has yet been documented/verified for Malia’s father.
Malia is a first cousin, twice removed, of Rabbi Capers Funnye. Capers is a Jew-by-choice. Malia’s maternal great-great-grandparents, Fraser Robinson and Rose Ella Cohen, were also Rabbi Funnye’s maternal grandparents.
Malia’s maternal great-great-grandmother Rose Ella Cohen had the usually Jewish surname “Cohen”. Rose was an African-American woman, whose father, Caesar Cohen, was also African-American. It is not clear where the “Cohen” surname originates in this family, or if Caesar Cohen had Jewish ancestry of some kind.
Sources: Genealogy of Malia Obama – http://www.geni.com
Genealogy of Malia’s father – http://www.wargs.com
Article about Malia’s father’s Irish ancestry – http://living.oneindia.in
Article suggesting that Malia’s paternal grandmother, Stanley Ann Dunham, had remote African-American ancestry – http://www.nytimes.com
Genealogy of Malia’s mother – http://famouskin.com
Genealogy of Malia’s mother (focusing on her own father’s side) – http://www.wargs.com
Notes on Malia’s mother’s ancestry, by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak – http://www.honoringourancestors.com