Michelle Obama heartbreak: Ex-FLOTUS shares ‘bittersweet’ wedding day memory

The ex-First Lady took to the stage with her older brother Craig Robin at the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago on Tuesday, describing the loss of their “patriarchal” father as “traumatic”. The 55-year-old told host Isabel Wilkerson how marrying Barack in 1992 was “bittersweet”. Michelle was asked about her wedding and if it was a “beautiful day”.

Sighing, the former White House resident replied: “Yeah, it was a hard day.

“My dad wasn’t there to walk me down the aisle. He had just passed.

“It was bittersweet and I was marrying the man that I loved, you know that guy Barack Obama, but Dad had died.”

Ms Obama asked her brother Craig when exactly their father had passed away, admitting she had “blocked out the actual day”.

Her father, Fraser Robinson, died at the age of 55 in 1992 after a long battle with multiple sclerosis.

Mr Robin, a basketball coach and broadcaster, went on to explain the family’s turmoil.

He said: “It was so traumatic when our Dad died. This dude was the epitome of dads in our mind.

“He was sort of the patriarch. People went to him for advice and jokes and comfort and solace and all the things you go to a family patriarch for.”

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Michelle also described how life was for her family – and other black families – when they moved to the South Side of Chicago in the 1970s, saying it was her first experience of “white flight”.

The former first lady spoke about her childhood and her life’s work at the the Obama Foundation Summit, she compared her experience to what immigrant families in America now face daily.

She said she wanted to remind white people that they were running from “us”, and that they’re still running.

Michelle added “artificial things”, like the colour of a person’s skin and the texture of their hair, can divide countries.

She said: “As families like ours — upstanding families like ours who were doing everything we were supposed to do and better.

“As we moved in, white folks moved out because they were afraid of what our families represented.”

The former First Lady claimed: “I always stop there when I talk about this out in the world because I want to remind white folks, ya’ll were running from us.

“This family. This family with all the values you read about, you were running from us.”

Michelle went on to describe that when husband Barack Obama was elected President for the first time, and the family moved into the White House, it allowed people to look past those “artificial things”.

source: express.co.uk