No one disputes that Obama was active in organizing Altgeld residents. Several who worked directly with him say that he was the most effective organizer they had seen — a surprise, given his youth. "He was our motivator" said Callie Smith, now 50, who was active in Obama's group. "We did all the work, but he was our inspiration."
The varying accounts of what occurred 20 years ago are noteworthy because Obama, now a freshman U.S. senator, has begun a campaign for the White House after three years on the national stage.
Beyond Illinois, where Obama was a state legislator, much of what the public knows about the Chicago Democrat comes from his two best-selling books. On the campaign trail, he has said that through the books he has revealed more of himself to the public than has any other candidate. They provide "insights into how I think and how I feel about the issues facing America," he told reporters this month, according to an account in the Wall Street Journal. Many people coming to his rallies bring copies.
But "Dreams From My Father," the first of Obama's books, is not a historical account. In it, Obama uses literary techniques that are rarely found in political memoirs.
Dialogue in the memoir is an "approximation of what was actually said or relayed to me," Obama wrote in its introduction. For the sake of compression, he wrote, some characters are "composites of people I've known, and some events appear out of precise chronology." Most names in the book were changed for the sake of privacy, he wrote.
And while most memoirs place their authors at the center of events, critics of "Dreams From My Father" say it is unfair in omitting the others who were responsible for the successes of the asbestos campaign, an event that Obama portrays as central to his maturation as a political leader. For example, Johnson is not mentioned, and no character in the book appears to resemble her, even though she was already a prominent Altgeld activist and her presence in the anti-asbestos effort is confirmed by interviews and news accounts at the time.
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