Years before President Obama launched a legislative career that would eventually bring him to the White House, he was a small-time author at times working the local bookstore circuit.
His book, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" -- first published in 1995 and reprinted numerous times since -- brought him enough notice to land him on page 7 of an August 1995 edition of New York Magazine, in a Barnes & Noble ad.
Twitter user Stefan Becket (@stefanjbecket) first spotted the future president, a discovery that comes just days after the release of a video from 1991 showing the then-Harvard University Law student speaking out on behalf of Derrick Bell, the institution's first tenured black law professor.
The highly anticipated video was supposed to be a bombshell, advertised by conservatives as proof that Obama was a radical with close ties to the "racialist" Bell. The website of the late Andrew Breitbart accused BuzzFeed, which released an advanced copy of the tape, of selectively editing a hug between Obama and Bell out of the video -- an image they deemed to be something of a smoking gun.
Embrace or not, the video was largely considered a dud. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, however, claimed it showed Obama was intent on bringing back discrimination from the "days before the Civil War."
Hugging professors and speaking out for college diversity weren't the only things Obama was doing in 1991. In another video, Obama is seen featuring in a "Black History Minute" ad for the TBS network.