S-T columnist Bud Kennedy may have solved a real whodunit, or in this case, a who wrote it.
It's the case of the missing Life article, the one Barack Obama cited in his book Dreams from My Father.
Obama referenced a 30-year-old Life magazine photo layout about an African-American man who underwent chemical treatments to make himself white.
Media investigations couldn't unearth the story and Karl Rove recently criticized Obama for citing the article without providing the details to back it up.
Kennedy thinks Obama may have seen a piece in Fort Worth-based Sepia magazine, the Life-sized competitor to Ebony.
The article matches up well with Obama's description of the photos.
One problem: Obama recalled the story as a black man turning himself white. This story is the reverse: a white Mansfield author chemically darkened his skin to see life as a black American in the segregated South. He later wrote a book about the experience called Black Like Me.
Read Kennedy's full column here.
Bud,
Thanks for clearing this up. J.H. Griffin is my niece's grandfather and I thought Obama's story was familiar and misreported.
Posted by: Sydney Eller | April 28, 2008 at 11:10 PM