For Obama, a tale of 2 speeches

Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: November 21, 2007 12:12:41 AM

WASHINGTON — In February 1981, at the small, mostly white college he was attending in Los Angeles, 19-year-old Barack Obama tried something that shaped the course of his life.

He gave a speech.

Like many students of that era, the sophomore was drawn to the South African divestment movement, which demanded that college trustees drop institutional investments that supported the racial segregation system known as apartheid. Obama's role at the Occidental College rally that warm winter day was to grab the crowd's attention, then be whisked off by students in paramilitary costumes.