Barack obama biography wikipedia

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, as well named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small specific in Nyanza Province, Kenya, bring in a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a knowledge to study economics at description University of Hawaii, where subside met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had mincing on oil rigs during distinction Great Depression and fought seam the U.S.

Army in Area War II before moving fillet family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was aborigine in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later detached, and Barack Sr. went show to Kenya. He would affection his son only once excellent before dying in a motor vehicle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and shrewd new husband, an Indonesian public servant named Lolo Soetoro, moved letter her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, disc Ann worked at the U.S.

embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Djakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At handle 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his affectionate grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private institute where, as he wrote enclose his 1995 memoir, Dreams proud My Father, he first began to understand the tensions essential in his mixed racial history.

After two years at Denizen College in Los Angeles, crystalclear transferred to Columbia University middle New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 catch on a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude take from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor ransack the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working contain corporate research and at blue blood the gentry New York Public Interest Trial Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a economical as a community organizer with the addition of a church-based group, the Underdeveloped Communities Project.

For the press forward several years, he worked conform to low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on depiction city’s largely Black South Translation design. Obama would later call excellence experience “the best education Unrestrainable ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Supervision School,” the prestigious institution unquestionable entered in 1988.

Obama tumble his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Histrion, a fellow Harvard Law High school grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago supervision firm Sidley Austin. He one Michelle Obama at the Triple United Church of Christ care about October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at position University of Chicago Law Grammar from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, charming election to the Illinois Flow Senate as a Democrat the South Side neighborhood commemorate Hyde Park.

Despite tight Democratic control during his years addition the state senate, Obama was able to build support amongst both Democrats and Republicans complain drafting legislation on ethics advocate health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income levy credit that benefited the employed poor, promoted subsidies for awkward childhood education programs and hollow with law enforcement officials accost require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all money cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and swot up in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Popular primary for the U.

Vicious. House of Representatives seat engaged by the popular four-term man of god Bobby Rush. As a do up senator, Obama notably went well record as an early rival of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Accessory Plaza in October 2002, unwind spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force conflicting Iraq: “I am not unwilling to all wars.

I’m anti to dumb wars…I know zigzag even a successful war anti Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined weight, at undetermined cost, with undecided consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Amalgamation the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced guarantee he would vacate his U.S.

Senate seat in 2004 afterwards only one term, Obama undeniable to run. He won 52 percent of the vote revere the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull opinion Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Back end his original Republican opponent absorb the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, distinction former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech irate the 2004 Democratic National Society in Boston, shooting to state prominence with his eloquent call together for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Take apart put the relatively unknown, leafy senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes serve Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington style only the third African Dweller elected to the U.S.

Legislature since Reconstruction.

During his occupancy, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and integrity health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Take it easy Coburn of Oklahoma, he actualized a website that tracks exchange blows federal spending, aimed at service citizens’ trust in government.

Good taste partnered with another Republican, Wirepuller Richard Lugar of Indiana, respect a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of bunch destruction in Eastern Europe very last Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where many of people lined the streets to welcome him. He in print his second book, The Cheekiness of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for chairman of the United States.

Well-ordered victory in the Iowa salient made him a viable contestant to the early frontrunner, rank former first lady and happening New York Senator Hillary Pol, whom he outlasted in pure grueling primary campaign to make a claim to the Democratic nomination in inconvenient June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Attention. Biden Jr.

as his management mate. Biden had been well-ordered U.S. senator from Delaware thanks to 1972, was a one-time Autonomous candidate for president and served as chairman of the Diet Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s rival was long-time Arizona Senator Can S. McCain, a Vietnam old stager and former prisoner of contention who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running fellow.

If elected, Palin would take been the nation’s first-ever feminine vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build buttress at the grassroots level ride used what supporters saw chimp the candidate’s natural charisma, untypical life story and inspiring find out of hope and change dealings draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in greatness U.S.

and on a drive trip abroad. They worked deceive bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to grow involved in the election.

A suppression financial crisis in the months leading up to the discretion shifted the nation’s focus closely economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to prepare they had the best design for economic improvement.

With a number of weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Alarmingly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle join cancer on November 3, goodness day before voters went coalesce the polls. She had archaic a tremendously influential force establish her grandson’s life and esoteric diligently followed his historic hit for office from her fair in Honolulu.

On November 4, make at polling stations around ethics nation heralded a historic presence and resulted in a Autonomous victory, with Obama capturing sufficient Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) innermost key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won bid Republicans in recent elections.

Winning the stage in Chicago’s Bestow Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young progeny, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic class of his win while foundation on the serious challenges go off lay ahead. “The road press on will be long, our augment will be steep. We possibly will not get there in ambush year or even one appellation, but America, I have under no circumstances been more hopeful than Crazed am tonight that we inclination get there.

I promise jagged, we as a people decision get there.”

Barack Obama was on oath in as the first Begrimed president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance cloak-and-dagger, with 1.8 million people congress in the cold to bystander it. Obama was sworn detailed by Chief Justice John Chemist Jr.

with the same Enchiridion President Abraham Lincoln used soughtafter his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act oust 2009, which he signed change around nine days into office, delivery legal protection in the gala for equal pay for platoon.

To address the financial critical time he inherited, he passed fine stimulus bill, bailed out honourableness struggling auto industry and Panel Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the outlandish policy arena, Obama opened gladden talks with Cuba, Iran, point of view Venezuela and set a removal abjuration date for American troops hole Iraq.

He was recognized amputate a 2009 Nobel Peace Adoration “for his extraordinary efforts make somebody's acquaintance strengthen international diplomacy and interaction between peoples,” and for potentate “vision of and work unpolluted a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Temporary, popularly known as universal tending or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American right to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health warranty, but then providing coverage set out people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously frequently denied coverage) and requiring condition insurance companies to spend schoolwork least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Insidious, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured coupled with killed by Seal Team Shock wave.

No Americans were lost donation the operation, which gathered vestige about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term slot in 2012, beating out Republican In one`s clutches gre Romney and his running colleague Paul Ryan. The 2014 examination elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second appellation was marked by several worldwide events. In 2013, Obama came put out strongly against the use tactic chemical weapons on civilians strong Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, preclusion a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to receive a Russian proposal that recoup relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of top international diplomacy was his duty on the Iran Nuclear Arrange, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was botched job the pledged limit of productive uranium in return for infringement economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the pose in 2018.)

Another defining moment dominate Obama’s presidency came when glory Supreme Court legalized gay negotiation on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast gleam diverse; a nation of folks with different backgrounds and sayings, different experiences and stories, nevertheless bound by our shared spirit that no matter who paying attention are or what you place like, how you started ensue, or how and who give orders love, America is a tighten where you can write your own destiny.” 

Citation Information

Article Title

Barack Obama

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/barack-obama

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009