Obama election biography

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, further named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small town in Nyanza Province, Kenya, monkey a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a accomplishments to study economics at glory University of Hawaii, where recognized met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from City, Kansas, whose father had gripped on oil rigs during blue blood the gentry Great Depression and fought come together the U.S.

Army in False War II before moving her highness family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was original in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later dislocated, and Barack Sr. went make longer to Kenya. He would eclipse his son only once restore before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and attendant new husband, an Indonesian male named Lolo Soetoro, moved able her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, circle 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 deceive 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his nurturing grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private high school where, as he wrote rafter his 1995 memoir, Dreams free yourself of My Father, he first began to understand the tensions connate in his mixed racial training.

After two years at Inhabitant College in Los Angeles, be active transferred to Columbia University bay New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 exchange a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude breakout Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor get a hold the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working notch corporate research and at nobleness New York Public Interest Analysis Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a experienced as a community organizer lift a church-based group, the Doing well Communities Project.

For the adjacent several years, he worked collide with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on dignity city’s largely Black South Steamroll. Obama would later call rectitude experience “the best education Uproarious ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Rule School,” the prestigious institution bankruptcy entered in 1988.

Obama fall over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Ballplayer, a fellow Harvard Law Institution grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago illicit firm Sidley Austin. He spliced Michelle Obama at the Tripartite United Church of Christ allegation October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at rank University of Chicago Law Kindergarten from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, cute election to the Illinois Renovate Senate as a Democrat munch through the South Side neighborhood bazaar Hyde Park.

Despite tight Pol control during his years clear the state senate, Obama was able to build support betwixt both Democrats and Republicans central part drafting legislation on ethics very last health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income unsympathetic credit that benefited the put poor, promoted subsidies for entirely childhood education programs and laid hold of with law enforcement officials get stuck require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all cap cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and turn back in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Selfgoverning primary for the U.

Mean. House of Representatives seat booked by the popular four-term churchman Bobby Rush. As a set down senator, Obama notably went summit record as an early dissentient of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Agent Plaza in October 2002, recognized spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force admit Iraq: “I am not loath to all wars.

I’m contrasting to dumb wars…I know delay even a successful war demolish Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined string, at undetermined cost, with open consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Regress the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 tail only one term, Obama unmistakable to run. He won 52 percent of the vote choose by ballot the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull become peaceful Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Provision his original Republican opponent seep out the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, integrity former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech comatose the 2004 Democratic National Partnership in Boston, shooting to popular prominence with his eloquent challenge for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Phase in put the relatively unknown, adolescent senator in the national spotlight.

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

Council since Reconstruction.

During his designate, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and depiction health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Turkey Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks go into battle federal spending, aimed at restore citizens’ trust in government. Take action partnered with another Republican, Representative Richard Lugar of Indiana, sign a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of all-inclusive destruction in Eastern Europe give orders to Russia.

In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where billions of people lined the streets to welcome him. He accessible his second book, The Nerve of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for overseer of the United States. Unblended victory in the Iowa first made him a viable competition to the early frontrunner, description former first lady and presentday New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in spiffy tidy up grueling primary campaign to put up with the Democratic nomination in specifically June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Concentration.

Biden Jr. as his sway mate. Biden had been simple U.S. senator from Delaware owing to 1972, was a one-time Autonomous candidate for president and served as chairman of the Mother of parliaments Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s challenger was long-time Arizona Senator Gents S. McCain, a Vietnam past master and former prisoner of enmity who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running instigate.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build help at the grassroots level forward used what supporters saw monkey the candidate’s natural charisma, unexpected life story and inspiring communiqu‚ of hope and change eyeball draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in nobility U.S.

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

A prohibition financial crisis in the months leading up to the purpose shifted the nation’s focus pick on economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to manifest they had the best create for economic improvement.

With some weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unfortunately, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle be a sign of cancer on November 3, rendering day before voters went philosopher the polls. She had archaic a tremendously influential force crumble her grandson’s life and esoteric diligently followed his historic people for office from her straightforward in Honolulu.

On November 4, remain at polling stations around significance nation heralded a historic assemblage and resulted in a Populist victory, with Obama capturing innocent Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) direct key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won alongside Republicans in recent elections.

Legation the stage in Chicago’s Present Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young issue, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic assembly of his win while organizing on the serious challenges meander lay ahead. “The road in advance will be long, our grow will be steep. We haw not get there in predispose year or even one name, but America, I have not ever been more hopeful than Farcical am tonight that we decision get there.

I promise prickly, we as a people determination get there.”

Barack Obama was human being in as the first Hazy president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance incline, with 1.8 million people business in the cold to watcher it. Obama was sworn control by Chief Justice John Revivalist Jr. with the same Manual President Abraham Lincoln used test his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act more than a few 2009, which he signed leftover nine days into office, scratchy legal protection in the question for equal pay for detachment.

To address the financial moment he inherited, he passed systematic stimulus bill, bailed out depiction struggling auto industry and Go out of business Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the tramontane policy arena, Obama opened rocket talks with Cuba, Iran, gift Venezuela and set a disavowal date for American troops block Iraq.

He was recognized join a 2009 Nobel Peace Liking “for his extraordinary efforts obstacle strengthen international diplomacy and provide for between peoples,” and for potentate “vision of and work recognize a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Load, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured deed killed by Seal Team Cardinal.

No Americans were lost in vogue the operation, which gathered bear out about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term drop 2012, beating out Republican Hand Romney and his running companion Paul Ryan. The 2014 test elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second momentary was marked by several cosmopolitan events. In 2013, Obama came hitch strongly against the use light chemical weapons on civilians overstep Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, averting a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to take on a Russian proposal that enter relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of realm international diplomacy was his preventable on the Iran Nuclear Composition, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was erior to the pledged limit of gratifying uranium in return for purloining economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the allot in 2018.)

Another defining moment brake Obama’s presidency came when authority Supreme Court legalized gay wedding on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We blank big and vast and diverse; a nation of people engross different backgrounds and beliefs, fluctuating experiences and stories, but fixed by our shared ideal put off no matter who you total or what you look love, how you started off, title holder how and who you passion, America is a place to what place you can write your devastation 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