31st May, 2024
By Kazeem Ugbodaga
Marian Robinson, the mother of former United States First Lady. Michelle Obama has died at the age of 86.
Her death was announced the Obama family on Friday.
Michelle announced the demise of her mother in a statement on X on Friday, saying her mother was her rock and always there for her.
“My mom Marian Robinson was my rock, always there for whatever I needed. She was the same steady backstop for our entire family, and we are heartbroken to share she passed away today.
“We wanted to offer some reflections on her remarkable life,” Michelle wrote.
Robinson (née Shields) was born on July 29, 1937. She was the mother of Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, a basketball executive. She was the mother-in-law of 44th U.S. President Barack Obama.
Shields married Fraser Robinson III on October 27, 1960, in Chicago. They had two children together, Craig Malcolm and Michelle LaVaughn, named after Fraser’s mother. Fraser died from multiple sclerosis in 1991.
Robinson worked as a secretary for mail-order retailer Spiegel, the University of Chicago, and a bank. In the late 1960s, Shields lived with her family in a rented second floor apartment of a brick bungalow the South Side of Chicago that belonged to her aunt Robbie and her husband Terry.
This is where she raised her two children, Michelle and Craig, and continued to live until she eventually moved to the White House with the Obamas.
Michelle Obama, in her book Becoming, described her mother’s strong attachment to her Chicago home and her commitment to raising her children as a stay at home mother. Shields resumed work as an executive assistant at a bank when her daughter Michelle started high school.