In March, a video of the 34-year-old Barack Obama surfaced on YouTube. It contains footage of an appearance he made at the Cambridge Public Library in September 1995.

While the video has accumulated more than 1 million views, these appear to have primarily come from fringe websites, which have cited the video as evidence that, to quote Infowars, a "Communist schooled [Obama] on white racism." (This is referring to Frank Marshall Davis, a friend of Obama's grandfather.)

At the time this video was taken, Obama had just published his first book, a memoir titled Dreams From My Father. Originally envisioned by agents as a "feel-good story," the memoir is instead a personal (if factually questionable) examination of the experiences of the mixed-race boy and young man who would eventually become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

The future president at the time was a lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he would teach constitutional law for more than a decade. He also was working as a civil rights attorney and had directed Project Vote in Chicago to register voters for the 1992 election.

Over the course of a speech, book reading, and question-and-answer session, Obama candidly discusses himself and his views on race relations in the United States from an variety of angles. He also performs a series of impersonations, first of some of his peers and then of his grandparents.