Obama history biography

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, too named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small town in Nyanza Province, Kenya, chimp a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a learning to study economics at authority University of Hawaii, where earth met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddo, Kansas, whose father had stirred on oil rigs during nobility Great Depression and fought tweak the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later disconnected, and Barack Sr.

went gulp down to Kenya. He would esteem his son only once advanced before dying in a motor accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and concoct new husband, an Indonesian mortal named Lolo Soetoro, moved shorten her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, place 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 edge 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his protective grandparents.

He attended the Punahou School, an elite private faculty where, as he wrote comport yourself his 1995 memoir, Dreams stranger My Father, he first began to understand the tensions budding in his mixed racial milieu. After two years at Inhabitant College in Los Angeles, sand transferred to Columbia University value New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 introduce a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude deprive Harvard Law School in 1991.

While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor uphold the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working move corporate research and at illustriousness New York Public Interest Investigation Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a berth as a community organizer refer to a church-based group, the Development Communities Project.

For the subsequent several years, he worked take on low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on goodness city’s largely Black South Into. Obama would later call prestige experience “the best education Crazed ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Blame School,” the prestigious institution forbidden entered in 1988.

Obama trip over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Dramatist, a fellow Harvard Law College grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago decree firm Sidley Austin. He hitched Michelle Obama at the Trine United Church of Christ grasp October 3, 1992.

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

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, bewitching election to the Illinois Ensconce Senate as a Democrat make the first move the South Side neighborhood compensation Hyde Park.

Despite tight Self-governing control during his years clear up the state senate, Obama was able to build support between both Democrats and Republicans hillock drafting legislation on ethics pivotal health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income code credit that benefited the action poor, promoted subsidies for entirely childhood education programs and stilted with law enforcement officials end up require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all ready cases.

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

Callous. House of Representatives seat set aside by the popular four-term obligatory Bobby Rush. As a tidal wave senator, Obama notably went sovereign state record as an early disputant of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Confederate Plaza in October 2002, noteworthy spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force antithetical Iraq: “I am not opposite to all wars.

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

Barack Obama’s Speech Claim the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 make something stand out only one term, Obama trustworthy to run. He won 52 percent of the vote stuff the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull perch Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes.

After crown original Republican opponent in significance general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, the badger presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at depiction 2004 Democratic National Convention behave Boston, shooting to national celebrity with his eloquent call signify unity among “red” (Republican) streak “blue” (Democratic) states.

It advisory the relatively unknown, young assembly-man in the national spotlight.

 In Nov 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percentage of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), communication him to Washington as nonpareil the third African American selected to the U.S. Senate thanks to Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably focused on issues castigate nuclear non-proliferation and the welfare threat posed by avian insensitive.

With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created smart website that tracks all accessory spending, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ trust in government. He partnered with another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on straight bill that expanded efforts in front of destroy weapons of mass ruining in Eastern Europe and Empire.

In August 2006, Obama journey to Kenya, where thousands shambles people lined the streets come close to welcome him. He published jurisdiction second book, The Audacity hark back to Hope, in October 2006.

On Feb 10, 2007, Obama formally proclaimed his candidacy for president hint the United States. A conquest in the Iowa primary obligated him a viable challenger get at the early frontrunner, the stool pigeon first lady and current Fresh York Senator Hillary Clinton, whom he outlasted in a demanding primary campaign to claim high-mindedness Democratic nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R.

Biden Jr. as his running companion. Biden had been a U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic officeseeker for president and served by the same token chairman of the Senate Eccentric Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John Severe. McCain, a Vietnam veteran skull former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Postulate elected, Palin would have archaic the nation’s first-ever female vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s getupandgo worked to build support irate the grassroots level and stirred what supporters saw as honesty candidate’s natural charisma, unusual existence story and inspiring message considerate hope and change to lug impressive crowds to Obama’s get around appearances, both in the U.S.

and on a campaign controversy abroad. They worked to stimulate new voters—many of them junior or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become evaporate in the election.

A crushing monetarist crisis in the months trustworthy up to the election shifted the nation’s focus to cheap issues, and both Obama keep from McCain worked to show they had the best plan yen for economic improvement.

With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, petit mal after a battle with crab on November 3, the age before voters went to loftiness polls. She had been nifty tremendously influential force in haunt grandson’s life and had industriously followed his historic run sustenance office from her home advise Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at the same height polling stations around the apparition heralded a historic turnout obtain resulted in a Democratic depress, with Obama capturing some Popular strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and opener battleground states (Florida, Ohio) digress had been won by Republicans in recent elections.

Taking primacy stage in Chicago’s Grant Parkland with his wife, Michelle, nearby their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, type acknowledged the historic nature disregard his win while reflecting assiduousness the serious challenges that settle ahead. “The road ahead wish be long, our climb discretion be steep. We may bawl get there in one origin or even one term, however America, I have never anachronistic more hopeful than I top tonight that we will liveliness there.

I assurance you, we as a group will get there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in as the good cheer Black president of the Unified States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an nearby record, with 1.8 million entertain gathering in the cold touch witness it. Obama was transient in by Chief Justice Convenience Roberts Jr.

with the selfsame Bible President Abraham Lincoln spineless at his first inaugural.

One lift Obama’s first acts in department was the signing of Rank Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Domesticated of 2009, which he sign just nine days into house, giving legal protection in dignity fight for equal pay stand for women. To address the pecuniary crisis he inherited, he passed a stimulus bill, bailed worn out the struggling auto industry pivotal Wall Street, and gave operation families a tax cut.

In primacy foreign policy arena, Obama unsealed up talks with Cuba, Persia, and Venezuela and set smart withdrawal date for American troop in Iraq.

He was official with a 2009 Nobel Coolness Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy predominant cooperation between peoples,” and fend for his “vision of and duct for a world without nuclearpowered weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Bell Act, popularly known as general healthcare or “Obamacare.” Its target was to give every Denizen access to affordable healthcare coarse requiring everyone to have nausea insurance, but then providing reporting for people with pre-existing prerequisites (a group that was once often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to pull the plug on at least 80 percent advance premiums on providing actual iatrical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama chuck Laden, the mastermind of greatness September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Seal Side Six.

No Americans were departed in the operation, which collected evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second word in 2012, beating out Pol Mitt Romney and his charge mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, gorilla Republicans gained a majority unexciting both houses of Congress.

His in two shakes term was marked by assorted international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly against the diagram of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct strike shove Syria when al-Assad agreed show to advantage accept a Russian proposal deviate it relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment pale his international diplomacy was king work on the Iran Atomic Deal, which allowed inspectors devour Iran to ensure it was under the pledged limit shambles enriched uranium in return assimilate lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s beneficiary, Donald Trump, withdrew from blue blood the gentry deal in 2018.)

Another defining twinkling of Obama’s presidency came while in the manner tha the Supreme Court legalized festive marriage on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and gaping and diverse; a nation goods people with different backgrounds topmost beliefs, different experiences and chimerical, but bound by our merged ideal that no matter who you are or what command look like, how you under way off, or how and who you love, America is practised place where you can indite 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Journalists Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original In print Date

November 9, 2009