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Obama getting help from Bajan son
Date June 08, 2008
Brief by TONY BEST

A brilliant legal mind who was raised in a "Barbadian home" in New York City will help United States Senator Barack Obama select his vice-presidential running mate.

Within 48 hours of clinching the Democratic Party's presidential nomination

by TONY BEST

A BRILLIANT LEGAL MIND who was raised in a "Barbadian home" in New York City will help United States Senator Barack Obama select

his vice-presidential running mate.

Within 48 hours of clinching the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Senator Obama named Eric Holder Jr, a former American deputy attorney-general, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, and Jim Johnson, a former chief executive officer of

Fannie Mae, to a search committee that will recommend choices for the second spot on the party's ticket in November.

Holder, the son of Eric Sr and Miriam Holder, both Barbadians, served as the top federal prosecutor in Washington after a stint as a Superior Court judge in the nation's capital.

As the American deputy attorney-general during much of the Clinton administration, Holder, 57, was the first black person appointed to that key post - which has responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department,

its 113 000 employees

and for its US$500 million budget - during much

of the 1990s.

His late father, who was born in St Joseph, came to the United States when he was about 12 or 13 years old and later met and married his wife who was born in New Jersey

of Bajan parents.

"I feel that I grew up partly in Barbados and partly in New York," said Holder, who was born in New York and was raised in what was essentially

a West Indian enclave in Queens where Bajans, Jamaicans, St Lucians, Trinidadians, Guyanese and others were among the main homeowners.

Holder, who was recently in Barbados, has been visiting the island since the 1950s.



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