According to The New York Post, Obama penned a letter from his own “androgynous” mind back in 1982 and addressed it to an ex-girlfriend. The Post said they obtained a redacted portion of the “now-notorious” letter from over 40 years ago.
They said the letter has now resurfaced following an interview from 70-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Garrow, who is also Obama’s biographer. In 2017, Garrow, who is also the biographer for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., released a book, ‘Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.’
Speaking with Tablet Mag earlier this month, Garrow said he spoke with McNear, recalling, “When Alex showed me the letters from Barack, she redacted one paragraph in one of them and just said, ‘It’s about homosexuality.'”
Being that there were several “salacious” paragraphs redacted from the 1982 letter, Garrow attempted to retrieve his own copy of the letter, which was now owned by Emory University. Garrow then had his friend Harvey Klehr go down to the Emory archives to find the letter and get him a copy. Only he was told that the letter couldn’t be photographed nor removed from the archives. Thus, Klehr had to transcribe the letter by hand and send Garrow the paragraphs.
In the letter obtained by The Post via Klehr, Barack Obama, who was then 21 years old, wrote to his ex-girlfriend, Alex McNear. At the time, the two were dating while attending Occidental College in Los Angeles, California.
According to Klehr and The Post, the former commander-in-chief reportedly wrote, “In regard to homosexuality, I must say that I believe this is an attempt to remove oneself from the present, a refusal perhaps to perpetuate the endless farce of earthly life. You see, I make love to men daily, but in the imagination.”
The nine letters written and sent by Obama to his then-girlfriend Alexandra McNear were obtained by Emory's Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, where students or visitors can read them in person by appointment when they become available Friday.
Rosemary Magee, the director of the Rose Library, described them to CNN as "very lyrical letters."
"They reflect the search of meaning of a young man trying to find his place in the world and a sense of identity," she said in a phone interview. "He has aspirations but he also has deep longings in trying to understand the world and himself. They are particularly appropriate for a college campus."
Obama wrote the letters during 1982 to 1984 after transferring during college from California's Occidental College to Columbia University in New York City.
He continued to send letters to McNear even after their relationship appeared turned into more of a friendship, when he took a job at Business International.
The letters, written in cursive on lined or blank paper in black ink, detail his day-to-day of maturing and transitioning, Magee said. He often crossed words out within the text.
In one letter, he writes, according to Emory: "School. What intelligent observations can I glean from the first two weeks? I pass through the labyrinths, corridors, see familiar faces, select and discard classes and activities, fluctuate between unquenchable curiosity and heavy, inert boredom."
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