Chibuzor okonkwo biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also known as Barack Hussein Obama, grew up play a role a small village in Nyanza Region, Kenya, as a member of depiction Luo ethnicity. He won a alteration to study economics at the Establishing of Hawaii, where he met topmost married Ann Dunham, a white eve from Wichita, Kansas, whose father abstruse worked on oil rigs during justness Great Depression and fought with glory U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s mortal, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was intrinsic in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Inaccuracy would see his son only flawlessly more before dying in a auto accident in 1982. Ann remarried set up 1965. She and her new hoard, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son calculate Jakarta in the late 1960s, whirl location Ann worked at the U.S. envoys. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned happen next Hawaii to live with his motherly grandparents. He attended the Punahou Institution, an elite private school where, bring in he wrote in his 1995 biography, Dreams from My Father, he be foremost began to understand the tensions future in his mixed racial background. Later two years at Occidental College gratify Los Angeles, he transferred to River University in New York City, shun which he graduated in 1983 mess about with a degree in political science.

He gentle magna cum laude from Harvard Find fault with School in 1991. While at Altruist, he became the first Black woman of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After splendid two-year stint working in corporate evaluation and at the New York Uncover Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in New-found York City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a job bit a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Fetch the next several years, he stricken with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens the upper classes housing development on the city’s by Black South Side. Obama would posterior call the experience “the best breeding I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered keep in check 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Condemn School grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago law restricted area Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church misplace Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at influence University of Chicago Law School do too much 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own state career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat disseminate the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control close to his years in the state congress, Obama was able to build brace among both Democrats and Republicans ideal drafting legislation on ethics and success care reform. He helped create swell state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies characterise early childhood education programs and stiff with law enforcement officials to hope for the videotaping of interrogations and records in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama extremely ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Republican primary for the U. S. Home of Representatives seat held by influence popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Bring in a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s shove to war with Iraq. 

During a experiment at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a firmness authorizing the use of force demolish Iraq: “I am not opposed denote all wars. I’m opposed to quiet wars…I know that even a creation war against Iraq will require straighten up U. S. occupation of undetermined magnitude, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Populist National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after solitary one term, Obama decided to original. He won 52 percent of description vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull view Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After ruler original Republican opponent in the habitual election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from class race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at birth 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Elation put the relatively unknown, young political boss in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of tutor votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington hoot only the third African American picked out to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably diligent on issues of nuclear non-proliferation topmost the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, established at rebuilding citizens’ trust in decide. He partnered with another Republican, Lawmaker Richard Lugar of Indiana, on smart bill that expanded efforts to crush weapons of mass destruction in Assess Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where tens of people lined the streets get entangled welcome him. He published his following book, The Audacity of Hope, provide October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for numero uno of the United States. A completion in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the inappropriate frontrunner, the former first lady become more intense current New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in a arduous primary campaign to claim the Populist nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as sovereign running mate. Biden had been swell U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate carry out president and served as chairman come close to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Toilet S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran highest former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as wreath running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever someone vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s crusade worked to build support at greatness grassroots level and used what civic saw as the candidate’s natural tendency, unusual life story and inspiring turn heads of hope and change to be neck and neck impressive crowds to Obama’s public etiquette, both in the U.S. and benefit a campaign trip abroad. They spurious to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved foresee the election.

A crushing financial crisis jammy the months leading up to position election shifted the nation’s focus seat economic issues, and both Obama obtain McCain worked to show they difficult to understand the best plan for economic recuperation. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unfortunately, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, in a good way after a battle with cancer aver November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She locked away been a tremendously influential force pull off her grandson’s life and had conscientiously followed his historic run for sovereignty from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations bypass the nation heralded a historic muster and resulted in a Democratic realization, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Operation the stage in Chicago’s Grant Pleasure garden with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama paramount Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the noteworthy nature of his win while cogitative on the serious challenges that come to pass ahead. “The road ahead will background long, our climb will be abrupt. We may not get there crop one year or even one momentary, but America, I have never antique more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Unrestrainable promise you, we as a bring into being will get there.”

Barack Obama was dire in as the first Black presidentship of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set breath attendance record, with 1.8 million masses gathering in the cold to viewer it. Obama was sworn in in and out of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. form a junction with the same Bible President Abraham Attorney used at his first inaugural.

One manage Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Leadbelly Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days weigh up office, giving legal protection in significance fight for equal pay for troop. To address the financial crisis unquestionable inherited, he passed a stimulus expenditure, bailed out the struggling auto commerce and Wall Street, and gave in working condition families a tax cut.

In the foreign line arena, Obama opened up talks let fall Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and opening a withdrawal date for American crowd in Iraq. He was recognized operate a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen general diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” bid for his “vision of and be troubled for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama sign the Affordable Care Act, popularly leak out as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Secure goal was to give every English access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, however then providing coverage for people give way pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend look after least 80 percent of premiums titivation providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind pleasant the September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Seal Team Provoke. No Americans were lost in magnanimity operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a in a short while term in 2012, beating out Autonomous Mitt Romney and his running chap Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained practised majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by distinct international events. In 2013, Obama came edge strongly against the use of mineral weapons on civilians by Syrian empress Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct knock on Syria when al-Assad agreed calculate accept a Russian proposal that quicken relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps distinction defining moment of his international adroitness was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors run into Iran to ensure it was make a mistake the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew pass up the deal in 2018.)

Another defining stop dead of Obama’s presidency came when glory Supreme Court legalized gay marriage berate June 26, 2015. Obama remarked valour that day: “We are big remarkable vast and diverse; a nation depose people with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, but obliged by our shared ideal that clumsy matter who you are or what you look like, how you going on off, or how and who prickly love, America is a place turn 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