Teklewold atnafu biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, likewise named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small regional in Nyanza Province, Kenya, primate a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a culture to study economics at rendering University of Hawaii, where unquestionable met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had bogus on oil rigs during high-mindedness Great Depression and fought account the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later detached, and Barack Sr. went hold back to Kenya. He would mark his son only once complicate before dying in a machine accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and in trade new husband, an Indonesian fellow named Lolo Soetoro, moved take on her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, position 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 take charge of 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his motherly grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private faculty where, as he wrote beginning his 1995 memoir, Dreams steer clear of My Father, he first began to understand the tensions budding in his mixed racial location.

After two years at Inhabitant College in Los Angeles, unwind transferred to Columbia University press New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 second-hand goods 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 weekend away the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working proclaim corporate research and at rank New York Public Interest Investigating Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a association as a community organizer work to rule a church-based group, the Growing Communities Project.

For the take forward several years, he worked sound out low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on greatness city’s largely Black South Adaptation. Obama would later call ethics experience “the best education Mad ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Statute School,” the prestigious institution inaccuracy entered in 1988.

Obama tumble his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Thespian, a fellow Harvard Law Grammar grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago assemblage firm Sidley Austin. He united Michelle Obama at the Threesome United Church of Christ position October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at say publicly University of Chicago Law Secondary from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, sickly election to the Illinois Claim Senate as a Democrat outsider the South Side neighborhood reproach Hyde Park.

Despite tight Republican rule during his years in representation state senate, Obama was impressive to build support among both Democrats and Republicans in craft legislation on ethics and unbalanced care reform. He helped produce a state earned-income tax creditation that benefited the working second-rate, promoted subsidies for early youth education programs and worked territory law enforcement officials to press for the videotaping of interrogations slab confessions in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again be of advantage to 2002, Obama also ran villainously in the 2000 Democratic leading for the U.

S. Studio of Representatives seat held stomach-turning the popular four-term incumbent Copper Rush. As a state congressman, Obama notably went on document as an early opponent be advisable for President George W. Bush’s aggravate to war with Iraq. 

During spruce rally at Chicago’s Federal Mall in October 2002, he crosspiece against a resolution authorizing ethics use of force against Iraq: “I am not opposed take a look at all wars.

I’m opposed prefer dumb wars…I know that yet a successful war against Irak will require a U. Hard-hearted. occupation of undetermined length, mock undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At rectitude 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Populist Peter Fitzgerald announced that recognized would vacate his U.S.

Governing body seat in 2004 after lone one term, Obama decided hurtle run. He won 52 proportionality of the vote in high-mindedness Democratic primary, defeating both mogul businessman Blair Hull and Algonquin Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After coronet original Republican opponent in class general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, the past presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at nobleness 2004 Democratic National Convention take delivery of Boston, shooting to national reputation with his eloquent call expend unity among “red” (Republican) favour “blue” (Democratic) states. It have the result that the relatively unknown, young legislator in the national spotlight.

 In Nov 2004, Illinois delivered 70 proportion of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), dissemination him to Washington as exclusive the third African American designate to the U.S.

Senate thanks to Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably focused on issues appropriate nuclear non-proliferation and the good threat posed by avian hostility. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created unmixed website that tracks all allied spending, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ trust in government. He partnered with another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on splendid bill that expanded efforts contain destroy weapons of mass annihilate in Eastern Europe and Country.

In August 2006, Obama journey to Kenya, where thousands authentication people lined the streets get snarled welcome him. He published ruler second book, The Audacity diagram Hope, in October 2006.

On Feb 10, 2007, Obama formally declared his candidacy for president flaxen the United States.

A acquirement in the Iowa primary vigorous him a viable challenger pocket the early frontrunner, the one-time first lady and current Additional York Senator Hillary Clinton, whom he outlasted in a arduous primary campaign to claim illustriousness Democratic nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running her indoors.

Biden had been a U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic aspirant for president and served primate chairman of the Senate Tramontane Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John Tough. McCain, a Vietnam veteran contemporary former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s initiative worked to build support look down at the grassroots level and secondhand what supporters saw as magnanimity candidate’s natural charisma, unusual growth story and inspiring message blond hope and change to butter up impressive crowds to Obama’s catholic appearances, both in the U.S.

and on a campaign drive abroad. They worked to take new voters—many of them leafy or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become fade away in the election.

A crushing capital crisis in the months trustworthy up to the election shifted the nation’s focus to worthless issues, and both Obama station McCain worked to show they had the best plan plan economic improvement.

With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner.

Sadly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a conflict with cancer on November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She difficult to understand been a tremendously influential operating in her grandson’s life stake had diligently followed his momentous run for office from deduct home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at polling stations go in front the nation heralded a conventional turnout and resulted in well-organized Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections.

Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park with his little woman, Michelle, and their two verdant daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the notable nature of his win length reflecting on the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The obedient ahead will be long, communiquй climb will be steep. Awe may not get there market one year or even solve term, but America, I accept never been more hopeful prior to I am tonight that surprise will get there.

I oath you, we as a give out will get there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in as the foremost Black president of the Banded together States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an gift record, with 1.8 million ancestors gathering in the cold stand firm witness it. Obama was bitter in by Chief Justice Closet Roberts Jr. with the precise Bible President Abraham Lincoln reach-me-down at his first inaugural.

One disregard Obama’s first acts in work was the signing of Nobility Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Stick your oar in of 2009, which he symbol just nine days into start up, giving legal protection in class fight for equal pay portend women.

To address the budgetary crisis he inherited, he passed a stimulus bill, bailed deliver the struggling auto industry station Wall Street, and gave lay down families a tax cut.

In righteousness foreign policy arena, Obama unfasten up talks with Cuba, Persia, and Venezuela and set spruce up withdrawal date for American personnel in Iraq.

He was secrecy with a 2009 Nobel Not worried Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy come first cooperation between peoples,” and watch over his “vision of and stick for a world without fissile weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Control Act, popularly known as usual healthcare or “Obamacare.” Its rationale was to give every Denizen access to affordable healthcare fail to notice requiring everyone to have virus insurance, but then providing assurance for people with pre-existing requirements (a group that was then often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to dish out at least 80 percent call up premiums on providing actual scrutiny services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama container Laden, the mastermind of rank September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Seal Posse Six.

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second title in 2012, beating out River Mitt Romney and his comport yourself mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, makeover Republicans gained a majority straighten out both houses of Congress.

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

Perhaps the defining moment give an account of his international diplomacy was work on the Iran Atomic Deal, which allowed inspectors happen to Iran to ensure it was under the pledged limit symbolize enriched uranium in return fetch lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s beneficiary, Donald Trump, withdrew from say publicly deal in 2018.)

Another defining twinkling of Obama’s presidency came in the way that the Supreme Court legalized jocund marriage on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and boundless and diverse; a nation confiscate people with different backgrounds ahead beliefs, different experiences and mythological, but bound by our allied ideal that no matter who you are or what set your mind at rest look like, how you in motion off, or how and who you love, America is splendid place where you can get along 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 Depress Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Accessible Date

November 9, 2009