Michelle Obama, “Becoming” on the Southside of Chicago

In this virtual program we will view a recorded interview with Michelle Obama at the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago.  We wish she could join us, but that’s not the case for this program expertly hosted by Oak Dowling. The interviewer is Isabel Wilkerson the famous author of 2010 The Warmth of Other Suns and 2020 Caste, the Origins of Our Discontents. The former first lady discusses her spectacular bestselling book, Becoming  in which, she explores the racially motivated reasons for the conversion from white to black and a compelling description of white flight. She links her comments to the attitude currently directed at immigrants arriving from other countries. Obama further details the failure of the U.S. Supreme Court case of “Brown v. Board of Education” in achieving desegregation in the schools. We will also see a video tour of the tiny South Shore neighborhood apartment where she and her family lived. After her marriage, she and Barack resided in this apartment while working at law firms in downtown Chicago.  

Oak Dowling, JD, is a retired attorney with 43 years of practice. He’s a graduate of the University of Wisconsin – Madison Law School and a native of Chicago. He was a part-time Instructor of Law at College of Marin and is currently an Instructor in the OLLI program at Dominican University.  In his law classes, he uses courtroom drama to demonstrate legal principles. Oak has been a member of the Marin County Financial Abuse Specialist Team (“FAST”) and was selected as Outstanding Marin County Volunteer of the Year for 2012-2013. As an avocation, he has performed in theatre in Marin and San Francisco for 15 years.