
Born in Chicago in 1998, Malia Obama has a perfectly patriotic birthday for a First Daughter—July 4. And that date has obvious meaning to her father. Shortly after his inauguration in 2009, Barack Obama published a public letter to both daughters in which he cited the lessons of 1776. “With the great privilege of being a citizen of this nation comes great responsibility,” the president wrote. “That was the lesson your grandmother tried to teach me when I was your age, reading me the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and telling me about the men and women who marched for equality because they believed those words put to paper two centuries ago should mean something.”