Obama credits his mother for his path

NEW YORK — Former President Barack Obama reveals in an upcoming podcast with rocker Bruce Springsteen that he chose a career of public service in part due to his mother, an acknowledgement that lands in the middle of Women’s History Month.

“My mom was a little bit of a free thinker,”“Obama says in Monday’s episode of Spotify’s “Renegades: Born in the USA.”

Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was an anthropologist who worked to help improve the lives of the poor in Indonesia. Obama called her “kind of romantic”“and “not that practical”“and said she put a “little bit of that into me.”“

Obama tells The Boss that he was attracted to public service instead of a big salary because he recognized the American dream was not achievable for many Black citizens. “When I thought about what I should aspire to, it wasn’t, ‘Man, let me be Jay Rockefeller.’ It was, ‘Look at John Lewis.’” “

Lewis, a civil rights icon, served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 17 terms representing Georgia and became the “conscience of Congress”“until his death last year.

He and Martin Luther King

Jr. were trying “to make the world better,”“Obama says. “That path looked to me like it was something necessary for me to do. My salvation was there.”“

The discussion was kicked off when Springsteen asks Obama, who graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, why he chose organizing when there were more lucrative doors open to him.