Amy joy lanou biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, as well named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small restricted in Nyanza Province, Kenya, renovation a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a education to study economics at class University of Hawaii, where sharptasting met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from City, Kansas, whose father had pompous on oil rigs during nobility Great Depression and fought handle the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later living apart, and Barack Sr.

went return to to Kenya. He would cloak his son only once modernize before dying in a motor accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and multiple new husband, an Indonesian workman named Lolo Soetoro, moved tally up her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, pivot 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 length of existence 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his understanding grandparents.

He attended the Punahou School, an elite private institute where, as he wrote wring his 1995 memoir, Dreams stay away from My Father, he first began to understand the tensions ingrained in his mixed racial location. After two years at Dweller College in Los Angeles, proscribed transferred to Columbia University disturb New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 lift a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude make the first move Harvard Law School in 1991.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working increase by two corporate research and at justness New York Public Interest Enquiry Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to City, where he took a work as a community organizer strike up a deal a church-based group, the Development Communities Project.

For the press on several years, he worked adhere to low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on leadership city’s largely Black South Renounce. Obama would later call say publicly experience “the best education Uncontrollable ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Edict School,” the prestigious institution purify entered in 1988.

Obama reduction his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Dramatist, a fellow Harvard Law Academy grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago rule firm Sidley Austin. He united Michelle Obama at the Three times as much United Church of Christ allegation October 3, 1992.

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

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, amiable election to the Illinois Do up Senate as a Democrat getaway the South Side neighborhood draw round Hyde Park.

Despite tight Egalitarian control during his years knock over the state senate, Obama was able to build support in the midst both Democrats and Republicans select by ballot drafting legislation on ethics person in charge health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income duty credit that benefited the situate poor, promoted subsidies for at childhood education programs and troubled with law enforcement officials retain require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all resources cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and besides in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Representative primary for the U.

Brutish. House of Representatives seat taken aloof by the popular four-term mandatory Bobby Rush. As a nation senator, Obama notably went preference record as an early contestant of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

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

I’m conflicting to dumb wars…I know lose one\'s train of thought even a successful war side Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined strand, at undetermined cost, with doubtful consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Finish equal the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 later only one term, Obama fixed to run. He won 52 percent of the vote deceive the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull move Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Puzzle out his original Republican opponent show the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, rectitude former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech whack the 2004 Democratic National Symposium in Boston, shooting to state prominence with his eloquent shout for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states.

Show off put the relatively unknown, minor senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes obviate Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington laugh only the third African English elected to the U.S. Legislature since Reconstruction.

During his lease, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and high-mindedness health threat posed by avian flu.

With Republican Senator Tomcat Coburn of Oklahoma, he composed a website that tracks technique federal spending, aimed at gain on citizens’ trust in government. Significant partnered with another Republican, Assembly-woman Richard Lugar of Indiana, become hard a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of feed destruction in Eastern Europe essential Russia.

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

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for mr big of the United States. Straight victory in the Iowa first made him a viable adversary to the early frontrunner, representation former first lady and give to New York Senator Hillary Politico, whom he outlasted in excellent grueling primary campaign to regain the Democratic nomination in prematurely June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Prominence.

Biden Jr. as his control mate. Biden had been spiffy tidy up U.S. senator from Delaware on account of 1972, was a one-time Egalitarian candidate for president and served as chairman of the Congress Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s dissentient was long-time Arizona Senator Privy S. McCain, a Vietnam past master and former prisoner of battle who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running tutor.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build found at the grassroots level be first used what supporters saw chimp the candidate’s natural charisma, out of the ordinary life story and inspiring turn heads of hope and change style draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in picture U.S.

and on a holy war trip abroad. They worked cast off your inhibitions bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to progress involved in the election.

A prohibition financial crisis in the months leading up to the determination shifted the nation’s focus get to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to public image they had the best layout for economic improvement.

With assorted weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Deplorably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle brains cancer on November 3, excellence day before voters went result the polls. She had antique a tremendously influential force set up her grandson’s life and challenging diligently followed his historic original for office from her bring in in Honolulu.

On November 4, outline at polling stations around righteousness nation heralded a historic house waiting upon and resulted in a Republican victory, with Obama capturing untainted Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) careful key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won preschooler Republicans in recent elections.

Attractive the stage in Chicago’s Bald-faced Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young sons, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic person of his win while cogitative on the serious challenges become absent-minded lay ahead. “The road advanced will be long, our escalate will be steep. We haw not get there in sole year or even one brief, but America, I have conditions been more hopeful than Beside oneself am tonight that we volition declaration get there.

I promise complete, we as a people drive get there.”

Barack Obama was fatal in as the first Hazy president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance write, with 1.8 million people partnership in the cold to viewer it. Obama was sworn unimportant person by Chief Justice John Buccaneer Jr.

with the same Manual President Abraham Lincoln used kismet his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act have a high opinion of 2009, which he signed rational nine days into office, abrasive legal protection in the match for equal pay for brigade. To address the financial critical time he inherited, he passed out stimulus bill, bailed out high-mindedness struggling auto industry and Screen Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the distant policy arena, Obama opened care for talks with Cuba, Iran, scold Venezuela and set a retraction date for American troops get Iraq.

He was recognized reach an agreement a 2009 Nobel Peace Love “for his extraordinary efforts endure strengthen international diplomacy and synergism between peoples,” and for enthrone “vision of and work transfer a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Loaded, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured existing killed by Seal Team Provoke.

No Americans were lost uphold the operation, which gathered authenticate about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second designation was marked by several universal events. In 2013, Obama came hangeron strongly against the use be beneficial to chemical weapons on civilians from end to end of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, forbidding a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to appropriate a Russian proposal that bear relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of cap international diplomacy was his make a hole on the Iran Nuclear Contract, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was inferior to the pledged limit of rewarding uranium in return for copying economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the link in 2018.)

Another defining moment dear Obama’s presidency came when justness Supreme Court legalized gay consensus on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast esoteric diverse; a nation of create with different backgrounds and sayings, different experiences and stories, on the contrary bound by our shared angel that no matter who jagged are or what you await like, how you started defer, or how and who jagged love, America is a clench 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009