CHICAGO — The drama began with a tiny ad in a local newspaper -- a notice that asbestos was about to be removed from the management office at Altgeld Gardens, the all-black public housing complex where young Barack Obama worked as a community organizer.
"You think it's in our apartments?" a worried mother asked.
"I don't know," Obama replied. "But we can find out."
What followed, Obama says in a memoir, was a life-altering experience, an early taste of his ability to motivate the powerless and work the levers of government. As the 24-year-old mentor to public housing residents, Obama says he initiated and led efforts that thrust Altgeld's asbestos problem into the headlines, pushing city officials to call hearings and a reluctant housing authority to start a cleanup.
But others tell the story much differently.
They say Obama did not play the singular role in the asbestos episode that he portrays in the best-selling memoir "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." Credit for pushing officials to deal with the cancer-causing substance, according to interviews and news accounts from that period, also goes to a well-known preexisting group at Altgeld Gardens and to a local newspaper called the Chicago Reporter. Obama does not mention either one in his book.
"Just because someone writes it doesn't make it true," said longtime Altgeld resident Hazel Johnson, who worked with Obama on the asbestos campaign and had been pushing for a variety of environmental cleanups years before he arrived.
U.S. Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) said it was Johnson's work, as well as asbestos testing conducted by the Chicago Reporter, that sparked the interest of Chicago officials and prompted Rush, who at the time was a City Council member, to launch an inquiry. Though he has not read Obama's memoir, Rush, who has been a political rival of Obama in recent years, said Johnson's role was so prominent that he was "offended" by anyone telling the Altgeld story without including her.
"Was [Obama] involved in stuff? Absolutely," said Robert Ginsburg, an activist who worked in Altgeld with Johnson and Obama. "But there was stuff happening before him, and after him."
No one disputes that Obama was active in organizing Altgeld residents. Several who worked directly with him say he was the most effective organizer they had seen -- a surprise, given his youth. "He was our motivator," said Callie Smith, now 50. "We did all the work, but he was our inspiration."
